Global Worriers can explain everything with CO2 (hammer: meet nail, meet hail, meet ET too).
The holy matrix theory strikes again. (h/t to Phys 1)*
With our university approved CO2 helmet we can explain things, like why there are no aliens. And we know there are none because we’ve had mass radio for 100 years out of the last 4.5 billion** and no one has picked up Alien FM. Plus we’ve landed some kind of gadget on nearly 1,000, almost 100, not quite 10, well 2 whole other planets and we haven’t found a single Klingon. Indeed we haven’t even found a cousin of e-coli. And some of the probes on Venus hunted for a full 120 minutes before they were vaporised.
Though naysayers about our knowledge of alien life point out that if intelligent life also went on to develop fibre optics, Wifi, and then entangled quark phones (or whatever) the radio transmissions window may last 500 years (or less) and thus we’re looking for intelligent life which may be a million years ahead of us which also happens to be a million light years away (and whose radio signals are still comprehendable spread over a sphere which is now two million light years in diameter?). Pfft. I say. Details. Who can argue with CO2 causing extinction of all intelligent life?
The Brilliant Gaiian Bottleneck theory reckons that intelligent life has to get smart fast enough to control the climate and stabilize things before they get killed off by climate change.
Because humans need a stable climate to evolve in, right. Like this?
Vostok Ice Core temperature proxy — the stability that humans evolved in.
It’s adaption or climate control
What’s more likely, that biology adapts to the environment, or that biology controls the planetary climate?
OK. Some freak fish switched from salt to fresh water in the blink of an evolutionary eye. And humans invented air-conditioners and heaters to adapt to the environment before we geoengineered the climate. It’s not like evolutionary forces subject to constant climate change would select for species that were adaptable to climate change… oh wait. Homo sapiens can survive in zones from -50C to plus 40C. But that doesn’t mean a 2 degree rise won’t wipe us all out.
Using our vast knowledge of other planets, researchers pontificate on how other planets didn’t get lucky:
Commenter nkalanaga at phys.org points out that “If Earth was in Venus’ orbit, the oceans would evaporate” and “Mars is too small” to hold it’s atmosphere. Well, intelligent life can puzzle it’s way out of that…
[snip]
Seriously — a journal published this wild speculation based on no data and a sample size of one? And the only case study they have (us) contradicts the theory? Welcome to government funded science.
The Case for a Gaian Bottleneck: The Biology of Habitability
ABSTRACT
The prerequisites and ingredients for life seem to be abundantly available in the Universe. However, the Universe does not seem to be teeming with life. The most common explanation for this is a low probability for the emergence of life (an emergence bottleneck), notionally due to the intricacies of the molecular recipe. Here, we present an alternative Gaian bottleneck explanation: If life emerges on a planet, it only rarely evolves quickly enough to regulate greenhouse gases and albedo, thereby maintaining surface temperatures compatible with liquid water and habitability. Such a Gaian bottleneck suggests that (i) extinction is the cosmic default for most life that has ever emerged on the surfaces of wet rocky planets in the Universe and (ii) rocky planets need to be inhabited to remain habitable. In the Gaian bottleneck model, the maintenance of planetary habitability is a property more associated with an unusually rapid evolution of biological regulation of surface volatiles than with the luminosity and distance to the host star. Key Words: Life—Habitability—Gaia—Abiogenesis habitable zone (AHZ)—Circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ). Astrobiology 16, 7–22.
REFERENCE
Chopra Aditya and Lineweaver Charles H.. Astrobiology. January 2016, 16(1): 7-22. doi:10.1089/ast.2015.1387.
* Credit to Phys 1 at phys.org for the term “holy matrix theory”.
** Which is 0.000002% of history, not that you asked.
Surely this was intended as an April 1 posting?
230
Oh thats funny. I thought the article in the Australian recently about a peer reviewed publication by some climate scientist in an Aussie Uni that fish in the oceans were getting drunk on co2 causing their certain demise at some point should have been published on April 1st too! But more seriously though, this weekend the official National Weather Service said more than 60 million people in the US are currently under “blizzard, winter storm or snow” warnings as “a deadly East Coast snowstorm” stretches from Georgia to Massachusetts. They said the “storm” officially achieved “blizzard” status late Saturday.
But Big Brother has indicated it is the storm that poses the deadly danger and by implication, not the cold temperatures. The emphasis is all on storms, blizzards etc. So it is extremely important, that when we talk about this event and events like it, that we get our language politically correct in terms of the “dialogue”.
So we can see that, as announced, this is a “deadly storm”……it is a “blizzard”…….. but you can’t think of this snow storm as a record cold event!
But try telling this to the people going through this experience. They are saying they haven’t seen temperatures as low as today’s temperatures in their lifetime and that the severe cold is on top of other very cold weather recently that is pushing people over the top, causing much hardship and life threatening circumstances due to the unprecedented low temperatures.
But Bigbro has just announced we’ve just had the hottest year on record? Are these people stupid or something? Look…….it’s not the perishing cold that’s deadly…….it’s the stormy activity that causes the deadly damage! Let’s get it right say the journalists!
If you are one of these 60 million, you can do a sort of reverse psychology by imagining you’re walking across hot rocks when you are out and about in the snow and ice. Imagination is a very powerful thing. You could imagine that the planet is undergoing a severe global heat up due to the intoxicating effect of that deadly substance CO2. Thinking about that could warm you up.
This sounds stupid but Bigbro overlooks this sort of stupidity because Bigbro is very compassionate. However be careful what you think and say. Just act like as if the cold temperatures in the US at the moment are not really happening. This event is actually just a blip against the backdrop of overall “warmer weather” in the scheme of things. This approach pleases the compassionate types as well as Bigbro. But they do say we are getting more and more awful storms. But just remember that just because this one is a snow storm does’t mean that it is a feature of cooling temperatures. Just because the temperature feels perishingly cold, it doesn’t mean it actually is cold. Didn’t you know some so and so has just published a peer reviewed paper that proves we can’t tell anyway. It has found that co2 makes us drunk and we can’t detect what is actually very cold and what isn’t as a result. The paper says co2 is doing this to the fish in the sea already. So go figure!!!
401
There are about 10 billion galaxies in the observable universe! This means there are at least about 1 billion trillion stars, most with multiple numbers of planets so the number of planets is too big to think about. The odds that we are the only life planet are therefore almost infinitesimally large. Also distances to nearest stars are also immense. Making a statement like this is therefore ridiculous and merely serves to demonstrate how these “climate” scientists are so excessively absorbed in their own subjective research they are not able to encompass the big picture. Exactly the same is true of their claim that humans can affect the weather.
180
If there isn’t some form of life out there somewhere it would be a huge waste of Space.
120
Isn’t that waste of space already occupied by some climate scientists.
150
There is no wasted space. The universe is inside out. Our Earth is actually the outer perimeter and we walk on the inside. This is how God designed it. I tried explaining this truth previously but was ridiculed thus won’t explain it again.
20
jpm;
Right! I (re-)read it. Timely, even eternal!
10
I think that this is mandatory reading after perusing this post :
https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf
John
40
See above. Very, very a propos.
31
Is it just me, or are lending this piece of science fiction undue credibility by bothering refuting it? We would be more compassionate by not engaging with it at all. Sort of like when someone elses kid does or says something really stupid, and you just smile politely. I actually feel sorry for these authors. What else does an Astrobioligist do, other than write stories for grown up leftards in diapers?
20
I keep hearing on radio and TV that we are having the hottest weather on record! If you consider that as the human race we experience a cycle of seasons that last 12 months and the graph supplied with this article clearly shows that our planet has seasons that last up to 100 thousand years. This summer seems to be a very pleasant season. As we in Canberra say “Don’t let other people know how pleasant it is to live here. Let them believe that Canberra is a hole of a place! That way they will stay away” Maybe we should also do the same to stop Klingon’s from using our planet as a summer retreat.
232
Ron:
Worse news. With the rising CO2 the Triffids are going to move to Canberra.
Imagine 1.5-2 metre plants with practically no brain lashing out at people near them. At least you in Canberra will be used to that, what with all the politicians you get.
260
G#3, the Triffids took over Canberra at its inception.
60
The thing with Triffids is that they were farmed for their oil (if I recall the book correctly), and as such, served a useful purpose. This is where the analogy with respect to Canberra falls down!
40
There may or may not be aliens but there are plenty of ferals.
We ferals thrive so why not aliens.
But is it just correlation or actually causation?
90
Jo, as they say in the classics:
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space, ’cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth!
241
No need to pray for intelligent life elsewhere because we do have a lot of intelligent people here on earth – those who used true scientific evidence and sound reasoning not to fall for the AGW alarmist nonsense.
140
Neanderthals adapted well to a freezing environment, until a large volcanic eruption wiped them off the planet. Homo sapiens are more adaptable and unlikely to be eliminated.
91
Except that evidence suggests that Neanderthals disappeared because they interbred with modern humans and we are the result.
40
If you’re interested, Robin McKie is a good read.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jun/02/why-did-neanderthals-die-out
10
Yes we’ve adapted pretty well here in Ballarat el gordo, not going into inbreeding either bobl……
20
Censors maybe
Heard this explanation of the human race
“Necessity – the mother of invention and the father of halfcasts”
20
As I’ve said elsewhere re “The Case for a Gaian Bottleneck:”
Bosh! Bilge! Tripe! Hooey! Drivel! Bunkum! Humbug! Hogwash! Baloney! Garbage! Twaddle! Tommyrot! Nonsense! Malarkey! Poppycock! Borosheetu! Felgercarb! Flapdoodle! Balderdash!
250
Ah. You have hit on my own particular hypothesis, Ms Nova – that the concentration of CO2 on Venus and Mars indicates that they have no life on them, and they never had life on them. Had there been life, more of the carbon will have been… well, “sequestered” seems to be the buzz term for that, now, in the rocks. This is why there will be no chalk, limestone, or marble on those planets. I also postulate that there is no other life, at all, in the universe – Earth is THE only place where life exists, or has ever existed.
While I have no real evidence that either of these hypotheses is correct, other than no life elsewhere has yet been detected, in spite of our persistent searching, and I, personally, certainly have no means to find any, do I eagerly await for either, or both, to be proven wrong. An easy enough, task, surely?
120
There are creatures in the deep sea that depend on sulphur not oxygen, there are even a few bacteria that can live on arsenic. Life on other planets may not require or expel CO2.
Have you considered the possibility that there are beings out there who haven’t invented cooking or ‘reality’ TV shows?
150
Are there? Show me.
30
Until someone found a black swan, it was a quite reasonable assumption that all swans are white. That is the beauty of my hypothesis – while it is impossible to prove right, it is easy to prove wrong.
40
Acid for blood Xenomorph’s?, I’ve seen them hanging around the cooling towers on LV-426, they mostly come at night…mostly.
30
The arsenic part isn’t really true- rather they can survive despite having arsenic in the food- They survive better without arsenic- proven by having greater population density away from the arsenic. Human being do that too.
10
IIRR, the arsenic-based bacteria were rebutted.
20
Graeme
Arsenic is borderline on being declared an essential trace element. Or was last week AFIK.
So those of us from the Australian inland (unless allergic) beed to stock up on prawns when coast side to help allay the deficiency.
Which makes me wonder if the real success of bluestone and arsenic sheep drench was a correction of deficiencies in As and Cu?
30
Another Ian:
AFIK arsenic has been considered an essential mineral (in small doses). People can in fact build up an immunity to quite high doses, and there are thoughts that it improves health. Most of these ideas/observations were made in late Victorian times, but haven’t been disproved. One thought is that arsenic might have killed off dangerous bacteria in the gut.
There is a side effect, prolonged use blackens the hair – DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME (unless you are a troll).
20
Graeme
Straying O/T on another dangerous subject
” # Roger liked to drink a little metho with his dinner
# A spoonful of strychnine was certainly a winner
# A rum and a johnnycake served for his tea
# He said, “Borroloola is the place for me”… #
”
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1167093.htm
10
In the 80-ties and before the focus was on deadly technologies like nukes for extinction. Now the result is the same, but the culprit is different.
The Drake equation for survivability of civilisations never included CO2 gas. In fact astronomers want to find CO2 by observing atmospheric drag of orbiting exoplanets to look for evidence of life. Once co2 is found perhaps they could conclude that these planets are not worth observing or visiting as everyone is already dead?
112
I listened to a debate on ET life. Some one put up the Drake equation and summed up his talk up with that the result gives bugger all cubed for the probability of life out there.
I did the calculations once for 4 light years, a receiver 10 000m2 (bigger than a soccer pitch), a transmitter using all of Adelaide’s electricity (when the winds blowing) and 100% efficiency at 12cm-1. I think it came out as 1 photon per second.
So bugger-all^4 probability for life within communication range and if I was one of them, I would draw the curtains and pretend that nobody was home.
120
I’ll overlook that it isn’t neither an equation, nor science¹; just an expression of some factors thought important at the time that didn’t include a great many that we now know are important for life.
As the late Nigel Calder (whose widow died last week) pointed out in The Chilling Stars, the universe is a harsh place. A solar system is itself the source of great natural violence but offers some protection from both the high particle flux eminating from the core of the solar system and intense inter-galactic radiation as the planet wobbles around the galaxy; porpoising across the disc between the glaxy’s “arms”. As one ventures closer to the centre of the galaxy, the intensity of the particle flux from the concentration of suns is so great that no sun can plausibly protect life long enough to evolve beyond the microbe. DNA and similar simply gets ripped to shreds.
This may be distressing for Captain Kirk’s of the future looking to engage with interesting species as allowing for the effects of hard radiation rules out the majority of solar systems in the galaxy from being able to provide conditions necessary to sustain life.
——
¹ “the Drake equation can have any value from “billions and billions” to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science.” — Michael Crichton in “ALIENS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING”
100
Bernd, you referred to the famous lecture by the late Michael Crichton at the California Institute of Technology on Jan. 17, 2003. His comment about the infamous ‘Drake equation’, which epitomises pseudo-science and the unknowable is worth repeating here once again. The complete lecture may be read here.
71
It is common sense given the ridiculous amount of stars and hence planets in the universe as we perceive it, the chances that only one planet (ours) ever evolved sentient life are vanishingly small. Problem is that the chances that intelligent life evolved anywhere near us, in either space or time (let alone both, for us to see/hear them) are also ridiculously small. Hence we can feel we are alone despite the opposite almost certainly being true.
Chances are the humans will begin spreading across the galaxy, albeit over the course of thousands of years, and eventually run into other life, but not as we know it 😉
10
Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. While pointedly ignoring contradictory evidence from space technology, “climate scientists” conclude that the sky is going to fall, that the world will end and that it’s all our fault. Then another bunch of chancers (“astrobiologists”, as they also like to be known, even if it is a really silly name) take the Earthbound findings from the first lot and extrapolate from them to the whole of space.
It’s genius, in a way. The warmistas have been desperate to try to extend Human Guilt out into the Cosmos for ages. It’s a bit tricky to make out that patio-heaters in Essex and SUVs in Kentucky and holiday flights to Bali are actually having all that much effect beyond Earth, so you just assume that the Lizardfolk of the Planet (Note 1) have already destroyed “their” (typically selfish Lizardfolk) world with their own patio-heaters, SUVs and flights to (see Note 1).
Note 1: More research is needed.
141
Remember when scientific journals used to vet what they published?
131
Remember when this sort of thing was the exclusive province of “Amazing”, and ” Astounding”. back in the days when the female astronauts had spacesuits with frills?
120
No, I don’t, but I bet the science wasn’t any dodgier.
70
Remember when this sort of thing was the exclusive province of “Amazing”, and ” Astounding”.
Yes, but the writers were not paid much. Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was very prolific but still made little money. I worked in a small book store in the early 1980s and we sold a lot of science fiction and fantasy books and anthologies.
Also, sold several copies per year of LRH’s Dianetics. Some claim there is a connection between that low pay and the creation of Dianetics.
20
As a sci-fi writer he made a good cult leader…
00
You mean these?
10
Remember scientific journals?
40
Yes, they took the place of Science Fiction. At least Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke had an impact, Clarke with his proposal of the value of satellites for radio transmission. There is alien life on earth too. How else do you explain Hollywood and Tom Cruise and John Travolta?
40
And now we’re getting back to L.Ron Hubbard
10
Well, they’re right about aliens dying off because they failed to regulate CO2, but they have the wrong sign. They fail to keep CO2 from declining. Carbon based like sequesters carbon in the form of fossil carbon and carbonates and eventually will run out of available carbon. If you follow the historical trend of atmospheric CO2 on Earth, it has been declining and may be gone in just a few tens of millions of years. We evolved just in the nick of time to reverse this.
180
No, what happens is that the world gets cold and the CO2 disappears into the oceans where CO2 is extremely soluble and compressible. What we need desperately is a little bit of warming. You can only hope CO2 is a real greenhouse gas, but the evidence is totally against it.
71
Jo,
Ten years ago Al Gore made his famous prediction that within ten years the planet would be “cooked” by rising global temperatures. It was at that time he launched his notorious movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”. However, Rush Limbaugh also at the same time put up a countdown clock on his website, determined to show up Gore for the charlatan that he is. You can see it on his home page, rushlimbaugh.com.
Well, there are, as of the writing of this post, only 38 hours to go until the ten years are up. Limbaugh will, naturally, proclaim in triumph, “We’re still here!” and have a field day with Gore.
I think this site should note the occasion as well.
241
Rush Libaugh’s Clock! What a laugh! 1 Day 5 hours to go.
30
Then of course the Vogon Construction Fleet will arrive and destroy the world to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
40
Allegedly.
00
Jeez, Jo. Give them some credit. There’s plenty of CO2 here on Earth and it must kill aliens. Otherwise how can we account for the fact that not a single alien has ever been found wandering around anywhere asking for a phone to call home — of course, excepting some lurking behind movie and TV screens and we know they’re all fiction?
The stuff is deadly. Just pay attention to the global warming people. They’ll tell you. 😉
110
RH,they’re called little green men.
There’s one in the lower house and a heap more along with their leader, in the mothership (the senate).
All have adapted alarmingly well to higher concentrations of CO/2.
91
Oh! I guess I missed that possibility. 😉
But wait a minute. Are you sure they’re aliens and not mutations, some perversion of normal human traits by some evil twist of genetics? 😉
60
The view from a sane position:
As for whether there actually are aliens somewhere else in the universe, I don’t know. And unfortunately the likelihood of detecting them is so close to zero, as you point out, that the question isn’t worth trying to answer. I’ve seen people using up their employer’s computer time, hour after hour and presumably their own computers too, analyzing radio
signalsnoise from space without a single identifiable trace of something repetitious enough to merit any further analysis. And that’s the one good assumption. If there is any message, intentional or otherwise, there would be something repetitious in it and the time period would be relatively short because there would need to be some form of constant, easily recognizable synchronization marker at relatively short uniform intervals.I keep wondering when there’ll be someone come along with a grip on the monumental difficulty of the SETI idea and the whole thing will peter out.
And then there’s the assumption that we can someday travel to the stars. Does anyone have any idea what a light year means in terms of time and energy needed to go that distance (never mind, I know some of you do)? You would need to convert more than the entire mass of your ship to energy for propulsion in order to even get yet a long way from the end of your trip.
I’ll stick to climate change as my bogyman and leave the interstellar travel and communication to Star Trek, Star Wars and the like.
50
Of course the roughly 186,000 miles in one light year has been done by unmanned spacecraft easily enough. We’ve landers on Mars to prove it. But how about the 30 light years to Earth’s nearest neighbor star (except the sun)? And then there are thousands or hundreds of thousands of light years to where some planet hospitable to us might be — or to aliens.
Anyone know what Warp 3 or Warp 7 is all about?
And let us remember something else. If aliens ever do make it to Earth they will have expended unimaginable resources to get here and they will want something when they arrive. I would not be trying to court aliens but trying to hide from them if I thought they could actually get here.
30
Roy makes a good point here where he mentions this: (my bolding here)
I smile every time I read in the media how a new planet may have been discovered orbiting a distant Star, a Planet in that sought after Goldilocks Zone. It’s always (X number of) Light Years away, and the (good news for a change) article always seems to give out that encouraging, well, you know, perhaps one day, we’ll be able to get there.
Then Roy mentions ….. light years, and does anyone have that concept of how far that really is, and how long it might take to get there.
Current escape velocity from our own Planet is (around) 17,500MPH, so currently, travel in Space is restricted to speeds around that, gradually increasing ever so slightly, the further out, eg, the Voyagers having gradually increased their speed.
Let’s look at the closest Star to Earth, other than our own Sun, the bottom of the two Southern Cross Pointers, Alpha Centauri, actually a triple star.
Alpha Centauri is 4.37 Light Years away from us here on Earth.
So, with current technology of space travel limited to that 17,500MPH, it would take 167,208 YEARS to get there.
And that’s the closest Star.
Look at the furthest stars from Earth, which are actually visible to the naked eye, the seven majors in Orion.
Find the belt, (those three Stars across the middle) and look at that centre Star, Alnilam.
Alnilam is a blue Supergiant, and is (around) 34 times more massive than Earth’s Sun, and up to half a million times more luminous than our Sun.
Alnilam is (around) 2,000 Light Years from Earth, so travel there from here will take more than 76 Million years.
So, where I read these articles quoting thousands of light years from here, all I can do is smile, mainly at the excitement shown by the journalist, thinking that one day, we may get to go to one of these Planets.
We can’t even get to the Moon any more, let alone to places like these.
The dream is fine, but it must be tempered by reality.
And, in much the same vein as we do not know if there’s anything, umm, out there, even if there is, then they have absolutely no idea that we are ….. here.
(Wormhole technology excluded that is!!!)
Tony.
80
Amazing how you sometimes write a comment and leave out something that the whole thing hinges on.
I saw the comments below mentioning the speed of light at 186,000 Miles per second, and I wondered if anybody was reading what I wrote, because I was certain I would have actually mentioned that.
However, it isn’t there at all, so let me say that all the Maths calculations I have there are with respect to that speed of light being 186,000 Miles per second.
Tony.
30
The problem in leaving earth is gravity. In areas with no gravity the time to reach 90% of light speed at 1g is 186,000 miles or 300,000km per second. So 300,000,000 metres/second / 9.8metres/sec/sec or around 30,000,000 seconds. At half a million seconds in a year, 60 years to 90% of light speed. You would however have to start decelerating at half way
So how far is it? 4.7 light years or 4.7*520,000,000 seconds, about 250million seconds at 300million metres per second. about 75 thousand million million metres, 7.5*10^15.
Half way would be 3.7*10^15 seconds by Isaac would be 1/2*9.8*t^2 so
0.7*10^14 seconds. t would be 0.8*10^7 seconds or 8 million seconds, about 16 years.
End result, 32 years to get there if we had the engine, but with time going slower, maybe 20 years older. What we are missing is an engine to provide a ridiculous 1g for 32 years. An ion thruster is measured in milli newtons, taking two days to accelerate a car to 100km/hr in space. It might be faster walking.
30
TdeF
Maybe there is hope
Try #34 on unthreaded
30
Where will you get the necessary energy and “thrust”?
Keep in mind that your apparent mass will also keep increasing significantly as you exceed even a small proportion (5%) of the speed of light. That’s a thousand times faster than what’ll be achieved by old technologies.
For reference; Voyager 1 is currently moving at about 0.000043 c, relative to Earth.
There’s also the problem of being constantly “perforated” by ever more high energy particles. These tend to damage complex molecules such as DNA. It’s something of an energy problem as one could plausibly shield from most of them using electromagnetic fields generated on board; deflecting or even funneling those particles to subsequently accelerate them within the “engines” to achieve thrust.
Prospective Mars missions are addressing the particle flux problem in different ways; firstly selecting a period when the sun is expected to be most protective against cosmic ray and yet be quiet in its own solar wind. Biologically, the physiology of the astronauts may be conditioned against the effects of ionising radiation by exposing them to moderate but safe background radiation (>100 mSv/a) for perhaps a year prior to departure. The prevalence of low level radiation appears to activate genes in DNA that increase the “checking” of the integrity of the new DNA during mitosis; permitting fewer mutations.
But Mars is very, very close, compared to any other solar system.
Our current technologies facilitate inter-planetary travel. With due allowances; and substantial risks.
We’ll just as likely have to journey into sub-atomic space to understand how inter-stellar or even inter-galactic travel can be made possible. There are too many fundamental things that we do not understand sufficiently to circumvent or to use for our benefit.
30
Bernd, 99.99% of the travel to the next star is truly in the void. Far less to hit. The Solar System is around 50 Astronomical Units, 50x the distance from the Sun to earth and a light year is 63,000 AMUs. You just have to leave the solar system slowly, maybe. Those high energy particles are a problem and seven of them stop in you every second on earth anyway. Being in space changes nothing, except you lose deflection of some by the earth’s magnetic and gravitational fields. One technique is to surround the ship with water, which is great for neutrons and a lot else, especially as humans are mainly water too.
10
TdeF says:
Um. Isn’t a year 31.5 million seconds? ( = 3600 seconds/hr x 24 hrs /day x 365.24 days) = 31,556,736 seconds or 31.5 million seconds …)
Mind you, it’s only two orders of magnitude difference, so whats a few million between stars?
10
Tony, perhaps I am overly pedantic, but I would say that rather than speed being the limiting factor, it’s acceleration – humans just can’t cope with extended periods of high acceleration which would be needed to get up to a decent inter-stellar speed in a reasonable amount of time. Then there’s the fuel… etc…
Also of note, the fastest man-made object is one of the Helios spacecraft, launched in 1976, achieving a speed of ~253000 km/h (~157200 mi/hr), and the fastest launch speed was the New Horizons spacecraft at 57600 km/h (35800 mi/h) – both obviously still an utterly insignificant percentage of the speed of light.
20
1 g is what we experience every day on earth. Try falling. 1g is enough to do a lot of damage over a short distance. In fact 1g is enough, over a lot of years to get to a good fraction of light speed. It’s just that we cannot do it, except in another Ian’s dragsters. Cars are special if they can achieve 1g. In space, you have to eject material in a rocket and at very high speed if light mass. You still run out of material very quickly, even with infinite energy.
30
You’re a surprising man, Tony. In addition to your knowledge of electric power generation you’re well versed in astronomy. Something not that many people know anything about.
What other things do you have in your bag of tricks?
20
Thanks Roy.
There’s also music of the modern era, (starting in 1960) and my great love, Test Cricket.
Did you know that Charles Bannerman, the man who faced the very first ball ever bowled in Test Cricket still holds the batting record for highest score on debut by an Australian. 165 Retired Hurt. Not beaten to this day, and Australia has had 443 players who have played Test Cricket, and we have played 786 Tests, since that day in March 1877 at the MCG.
Tony.
30
Well, Tony, now that I’ve asked the question, you came back and snowed me in completely with Test Cricket. I’ve heard of just plain old Cricket. But what exactly is Test Cricket? I wouldn’t know how to even make a guess.
Your interest in music we all know about from some of your comments. But Test Cricket is beyond me. I see that the Internet is full of references to it so I guess I have some reading to do.
And by the way, it should be obvious by now that I’m one of those who know nothing of substance about astronomy. A star is just like any other star to me, all just lights in the night sky, a pretty display if you can get away from the city light pollution. But otherwise I’m out of my league.
00
Roy,
There’s a lot more than 186,000 miles in a light-year (try multiplying by about 31 million).
Your 186,000 miles (300,00 km) is one-light-second.
And its about 4 light years to earth’s nearest neighbour star, not 30.
70
Yes, you’r right. You caught me with my memory shut down to idle I’m afraid. It is indeed 186,00 miles/second (approximately by the way). That makes a light year so far from here that I can’t even get my mind around one of them, much less 4 or 30.
As for astronomy, I’m a complete ignoramus. So if it’s 4 and a fraction I’ll take your word for it.
Dumb, Roy 🙁
30
Um, that’s one light-second! 1 ly =~ 5,000,000,000,000 miles.
40
Light travels roughly 186,000 miles per second…
40
Waiting for the warmist rehash of H.G. well’s War of the worlds Roy, except the Martians are killed off by deadly CO2 instead of common bacteria.
51
Wouldn’t that be unlikely given Mars has a CO2 atmosphere ?
30
No. You are forgetting that the CO2 created by humans is completely different, and far more dangerous compared to CO2 created ‘naturally’.
50
Good point. Industrial CO2 produced by democratic countries is the worst.
60
It is a well-known fact that CO2 from fossil fuels is the only kind that “traps” heat, and the physical characteristics of CO2 suddenly changed circa 18th Century, coincident with the ‘Industrial Revolution’.
Prior to that time, CO2 at concentrations of 4,000 – 8,000 ppm, or even in the percent range, was incapable of trapping heat, hence you had “Snowball Earth” in the Cryogenian, and the Ordovician/Silurian glacial episode(s).
I would be nice if you could keep up with the evolving “settled” science. It only gets revised several times per day. What’s Up With That, your inability to keep up?!?!
Regards,
Vlad
30
Yoni,
For a story with a nothing plot and totally uninteresting characters (actually just one character worthy of noticing), H. G. Wells got more mileage than you would ever expect out of The War of The Worlds. It’s been made into at least 2 movies and was a radio broadcast that put the entire known world into a panic (well, almost ;-)). Ironically that panic was caused by Orson Wells. I wonder if there’s any relationship.
The 1952 George Pal version of the movie is on Netflix if you’re interested. It’s by far the better of the two although the more recent one is also good. I was a young teenager in ’52 and I walked to the theater, paid my quarter admission (how much does it cost now?) and sat on the edge of my seat with the hair on the back of my neck standing up when that marian spacecraft began to unscrew and the heat ray slowly poked it’s head out for a look around. Best suspense scene I’ve ever seen.
And no, I doubt that CO2 would kill the martians. Maybe all our political BS might though.
40
By now CO2 should have a lawyer and be suing for defamation of character and other assorted torts against it. If there ever was a bum rap CO2 has had it, in fact more than its share. There needs to be some justice for its suffering. So are there any lawyers in the audience looking for some pro bono work? It would have to be that way since CO2 has no source of income. 😉
30
I never imagined that a comment made for the sake of a little humor could generate so much conversation.
But several things have been discussed about interstellar travel and I’d like to put in my two cents worth.
First: As I have been taught, relativity theory doesn’t say you can’t travel faster than the speed of light. What is does say is that no observer not aboard your ship can ever tell that you did it. It’s known as the twins paradox. One twin, George departs for a distant star and by constant acceleration to the mid point of that journey manages to reach a speed that gets to that point (light years from Earth) in just a few years as the twin in the spaceship sees time. To George he’s crossed the distance at more than the speed of light. He decelerates to be at a reasonable speed when arriving at his destination, does his exploration and returns to Earth the same way. Upon arriving home he has aged only the few years, measured in his time, that it took to make the trip. His brother, Frank on the other hand, has waited for most of his life for George’s return because he cannot see the time passing for George at the same rate as George saw it. So when George arrives home Frank is an old man.
The problem with travel between the stars is to have a power source that can drive your ship that hard for long enough to reach a speed where you can get to the destination in a reasonable time — reasonable to you aboard the spaceship. As far as I know, there is no such source of power, much less can a human traveler withstand the constant heavy acceleration for any length of time. Hence my statement that you would need to convert more than the entire mass of your ship to energy for propulsion.
Second: This is why I think travel to the stars is forever foreclosed to us here on Earth. I’ve seen many ideas, some no more than flights of fancy, even use of wormholes to do such travel, yet we don’t even know if wormholes really exist, much less how we might fare in trying to go through one. And then, how do you control one so it’s practical for travel?
But then third: Relativity theory has begun to be seriously challenged, so maybe we don’t even begin to know the whole problem we would face in order to travel to the stars.
Maybe Star Trek isn’t so far fetched as we imagine. Do we really know all the laws of physics and their extensions for situations we know little or nothing about (like high exceleration)?
Look out you aliens. We may be coming to you someday. CO2 or not.
00
Oh, and isn’t it ironic that at the time the ten years has expired there is a massive once-in-a-lifetime blizzard blanketing the US from the Mid-West to the North East and Central east coast and even down into the south.
But, not to be deterred, Mann and Trenberth are “explaining” this as due to rising global temperatures, esp. in the Atlantic Ocean! See Delingpole’s commentary at http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/23/global-warming-hits-the-east-coast/
71
“However, the Universe does not seem to be teeming with life.”
That’s just because we are foolishly hoping their communications are using radio waves. SETI are wasting their time, no aliens are going to wait light-years just to send a tweet or text between stars.
We will only find out about alien civilisations when we invent and turn on a faster than light sub-space receiver. At that point we will of course be bombarded with important messages about “Bob’s discount starship fuel” and “Tentacle cream to keep your suckers looking 1000 years young”.
90
Dear Jo,
Are you absolutely, quite, quite sure, really truly sure, that it’s not April the 1st? ;))
Annie.
50
I love it !!!!
April 1st is still a long way off (at least in the states) but Jo definitely has a sense of humor nevertheless.
40
Thanks Roy! We need to laugh sometimes; it’s much better than crying!
40
I wonder if the publication of these tabloid papers in supposedly reputable journals isn’t actually a worrying development
I mean, are the CAGW activists feeling so sure that they have control of the bureaucrats, politicians and public opinion that they can indulge themselves with this penny-dreadful rubbish ?
Probably. In short, we dis-believers are being laughed at
81
If aliens visited Earth would they consider the “life” they found “intelligent”?
100
Yes – that includes all Earth life forms except for “Homo Sapien AGW Believers” and it seems their numbers are dwindling as planet stubbornly refuses to get hotter as CO2 in the atmosphere rises.
41
We , as Humans , tend to think of ourselves as being very advanced in evolutionary terms , and are conditioned via Hollywood to think of aliens as being like characters from Star Wars and Star Trek etc , the reason why we havent detected other life in the universe is probably because we are only capable of looking for species at a similar stage of evolution to us , some species may not have evolved enough to have technology that we can detect , whilst others are so far more advanced in evolutionary terms than us that they live on a different plain of existence , one that we cannot yet comprehend , i see us Humans in evolutionary terms , as at a similar stage in our development to an unborn child , totally unaware of any existance outside of our universe ( womb ) one day when we’ve evolved enough to leave the confines of that womb we might just find a plain of existance thats teeming with life , thats if ofcourse we don’t get killed off before hand by an asteroid strike or global warming ( sarc )
51
plane, doubter.
10
Whoops , thankyou Brian , my only excuse is perhaps the extra beer tokens exchanged this weekend due to adding my beloved Gariboldi Reds to my saturday football accumulator at odds of 5/1 away at the Riverside , resulting in a financial windfall that will replace my PC that crashed and burned this Xmas and still leave a few pounds for a small donation to Jo’s chocolate fund when my new laptop arrives through the post later this week . Que smug expression 😉
40
if I want sci-fi, I can turn on ABC.
woke up to this surreal Science Show:
23 Jan: ABC Science Show: Robyn Williams: Powering cities of the future
A panel of scientists and engineers consider power options for Australian cities as the urgency to move away from fossil fuels increases…
(from alt page) Coal and oil needs to stay in the ground and other sources of power need to be implemented quickly…
How has China, with its smog managed to embrace solar power so quickly?…
The Geological Society of Australia assembled this forum of scientists and engineers to discuss options in Australia and reflect on achievements elsewhere…
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/powering-cities-of-the-future/7104632
from Geological Society of Australia website:
Powering Sydney into the Future: the science of Alternative Energy
A GSA Public Forum
As part of the Sydney Science Festival, the GSA held a Public Forum on Monday, 17 August, during National Science Week 2015.
Special thanks to: Robyn Williams, ABC science journalist and broadcaster for impressively moderating the discussion.
Special thanks to the Panelists:
Prof. Mary O’Kane, NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer
Prof. Ben Hankamer, University of Queensland, Director of Solar Biofuels Consortium
Dr Gary Ellem, Tom Farrell Institute
Tony Irwin, Technical Director, SNR Nuclear Technology
Scientia Professor Deo Prassad, CEO of the CRC for Low Carbon Living
Thank you for joining us for this stimulating evening and for your questions and engagement.
then heard “Fran’s Breakfast” opening promo about this series which will continue all week!
25 Jan: ABC Breakfast: Local communities in the Galilee Basin: Abbot Point
Green groups, mining interests and politicians have been battling it out on the national stage…
RN Breakfast has decided to spend some time with some of those most directly affected by the proposed projects, to hear their concerns and hopes first-hand.
In the first report in a series this week, RN Breakfast’s Queensland reporter Cathy Van Extel visits Abbot Point, where she looks at the facility and the areas that will feel the impact of the proposed port expansion.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/local-communities-in-the-galilee-basin/7111198
with a soundbite from a fisherman who would be a loser if the coal terminal goes ahead.
mind u, BBC was no better with one of their meteorologists (presumably) being asked by a presenter why minus 40-plus celcius temps in Asia hadn’t been forecast.
said the meteorologist – it would take a brave meteorologist to would predict such temperatures!!!
he went on to say the extreme cold was just part of the extreme climate events experienced all last year and El Nino played a part.
BBC aren’t documenting this conversation as far as I can tell.
41
I hereby nominate the authors, Aditya Chopra and Charles H. Lineweaver , for the The Philip K. Dick Award .
40
Or maybe ‘It’s life Jim but not as we know it.’
40
Humans must find new planets to survive
Time has marched on and Aditya Chopra now has his PhD. A self-professed devotee to ‘Answering the big questions‘ we now have his latest co-authored clifi ‘The Case for a Gaian Bottleneck’ whose speculative abstract replete with ‘seem’, ‘notionally’, ‘if’ and ‘suggest’ would make a useful addition to Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
Lineweaver (2012), his longstanding co-author says one of the reasons why humans should search for habitable planets is to place future human colonies. He reportedly stating that:
Someone needs to pay attention. The UN Greens have already got there. Yes, they’ve already staked out the whole Universe. It’s a big ‘no’. Off limits to casual wanderers and explorers. Presently Planetary Protection is in full swing. Indeed, NASA has an Office of Planetary Protection much like they have The Goddard Institute for
SpaceClimate Studies (GISS). Anyone with any intentions of gallivanting about the Galaxy may not find it quite so easy.Perhaps we should add Green Nihilism and terminal ‘boredom’ to the list of species mass extinction events?
50
Maybe NASA and GISS are staffed by a bunch of little (minded) green men, women, others …
51
Unbefrigginglievable. This is in the same league with ignorant scientwits who blissfully cite non-existent “low-cost batteries that will soon be available for storage of wind energy.”
70
BBC have, at least, documented the following:
24 Jan: BBC: South Korea and Hong Kong shiver as snow disrupts travel
The South Korean island of Jeju has seen its biggest snowfall in three decades, causing hundreds of flights to be cancelled…
In Hong Kong, residents shivered in three degrees Celsius, the lowest temperature there in nearly 60 years…
In Japan, the Kyodo news agency said five people had died and more than 100 had been injured in weather-related accidents across the country in the past 24 hours…
The agency also said it had snowed in Amami Island, a subtropical island 380km (235 miles) south-west of Kagoshima City, for the first time in 115 years…
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35395780
22 Jan: UK Daily Mail: Sophie Williams: So cold your EYEBROWS could freeze: Chinese residents embrace coldest winter in 30 years as temperatures drop to as low as -47.8C
China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency say that temperatures are expected to drop below freezing in 90 per cent of the country this week.
Today in Genhe, Inner Mongolia, the temperature dropped to -47.8 degrees Celsius.
There are concerns that the extreme weather will affect fruit and vegetable crops and local agricultural authorities have warned farmers to add organic fertilizers to their crops to reduce damage control.
One farmer Zhu Dazhi spoke to the People’s Daily warning: ‘The temperature will stay below zero for several days. Only ten percent of the vegetables will survive’…
While other people have been getting out into the snow, testing out the arctic-like temperatures by throwing boiling water into the air which freezes turning the water into a cloud of crystals…
While Hong Kong which is usually sub-tropical, will see temperatures plunge to around seven degrees Celsius. In the New Territories forecasters have predicted ice and frost for the area. There have only been four instances of this since records began in Hong Kong…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/peoplesdaily/article-3410277/So-cold-EYEBROWS-freeze-Chinese-residents-embrace-coldest-winter-30-years-temperatures-drop-low-47-8C.html
NASA/NOAA/Met Office – your HOT pronouncements mean nought to billions.
70
hide the snow:
23 Jan: WaPo: Angela Fritz: Washington, D.C., snowfall total called into question after improper measurement
(Angela Fritz is an atmospheric scientist and The Post’s deputy weather editor.)
Jason Samenow contributed to this post
It has become apparent this afternoon and evening, through multiple conversations with the weather observers at Reagan National Airport, that the snowfall totals submitted to the National Weather Service for that location have not been measured properly.
As of 8 p.m., 17.8 inches of snow had been recorded at National – Washington, D.C.’s official weather monitoring location. That reflects just a 0.3-inch increase in the three hours since 5 p.m. during which time light to moderate snowfall was being reported at the airport.
The National Weather Service has clear guidelines on how to measure snowfall for one simple reason: snowstorms have a huge effect on the economy, life and property. They have an impact on millions of people and can result in millions of dollars lost. They also play an obvious important role in the historical record.
The way that the snowfall has been measured at National in this storm has led to snowfall totals that could be much lower than what has actually fallen and may have unnecessarily withheld the storm from ending as one of the top 3 snowiest on record…READ ON
***(An earlier version of this story incorrectly said the Weather Service contracts with the FAA for the observations. The contract is actually between the FAA and the observers)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/01/23/washington-d-c-snowfall-total-called-into-question-after-improper-measurement/
***passing the blame?
check the comments.
50
Then there’s this – I don’t even know what to call it. Never mind that through the eons of time when life was evolving from its first primitive form so it could get to today’s human being, CO2 concentrations have gone through the roof and back again and so have temperatures, not simultaneously, however. Ain’t science amazing? And those who practice it without a license to think are even more amazing.
70
And let’s not even mention the audacity of making such statements about happenings on far away planets to aliens we can’t even be sure exist(ed).
These people must be wearing brass jockstraps (forgive the term, it seems to fit). 😉
20
“Brass” is so-o passe!
Protect your package from RADIATION: Anti Wi-Fi boxer shorts are lined with silver to shield your groin from mobile phones!
Here!
50
I knew it, one more tinfoil hat for the fearful. It was bound to happen. They should sell very well. Buy stock while you can.
I wonder what would happen if these same tinfoil hat people were told how much radiation they’re getting from space everyday of their lives with nothing they can do about it. Panic without a doubt.
10
My radio doesn’t receive strong signals from 200 miles away even when the ionosphere cooperates. How strong is the signal – and, by extension, how powerful the receivers – when you are even at the end of our solar system, let along 100 light years away?
We get radio signals from the galactic centre, sure, but those are from black holes and quasars. I’m not sure the Top 40 hits station from across the Mexican border is in the same power spectrum.
40
Compare the ease at which the 22 watts of RF from Voyager 1 is being to be resolved from a distance of 11.5 billion miles (18.5 billion kilometers).
40
What’s more impressive is being able to resolve those 22 watts amongst the mega-/giga-watts of RF noise spewing from the outer planets.
50
Tom,
I’m sure you know that very high gain receiving antennas are being used. But those also add their gain to the noise coming from the same direction as the signal, even while they reject stuff not from the right direction. So then take a look at how much redundancy and/or error detection and correction technology is being used so the signal can be resolved to the correct data at the receiving antenna all those billions of miles from the source. And it helps that all those 22 watts are aimed directly at where the Earth will be when the signal gets here and not broadcast omnidirectionally.
Without some sophisticated technique it wouldn’t work. And today we could do it even better.
Doug’s radio has none of that to help him out of his DX problem. Voyager, even as old as it is, has the benefit of some sophisticated technology.
20
When I visited Tidbinbilla earlier this century, ISTR that the data rates achieved were then in the order of 80 bits per second.
The very sophisticated technology works because it’s also very simple. And nuclear powered.
And because there are/were people who were clever enough to e.g use the communications system as a sensor for probing planets.
11
80 bits/second is painfully slow by today’s digital TV standard. MPEG-2 can need up to 8 or 9 mega bits, possibly a little more, with the average being more like 5 or less, depending on the picture complexity. Then there’s the MPEG-4 system that gives twice the 1920 x 1080 resolution of present day HD at the same frame rate. The escalation of technology never ends.
I only wish the fare from my cable provider was something worthy of all that technology. But what do I get, least common denominator reality shows for my money? Ugh! I often wonder if the average TV viewer has even the slightest idea of what’s going on inside their TV on which they’re watching those brainless reality shows. And probably they don’t have a clue.
00
Watching the bit-stream from V-GER is infinitely more interesting than daytime TV.
00
Watching the grass grow would be more interesting than most TV.
00
I am enjoying Netflix. They have some really good stuff along with all the deadly boring shows. Best $11.99/month entertainment value I can think of.
00
And I can stream it directly to my TV in the living room thanks to my Blu Ray player. So I don’t have to settle for the much smaller monitor on my office computer.
00
Does this upset Scafetta’s theory?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v428/n6985/abs/nature02470.html
30
Let global warmists move to Avatar,
Arriving there as aliens from afar,
To find some chilly world of low degrees,
Then facing mass extinction from the freeze,
Would quickly steer their ships to planet Earth,
And appreciate the world which gave them birth,
And if let back, would thank the skeptics too,
Who welcome extra heat and CO2.
140
Ruairi is taking us into uncharted territory here from my limited educational perspective.
My question is; what poetic form is he using?
He seems to be channelling the Movie INTERSTELLAR from 2014.
60
Peter,
Check out iambic pentameter and the heroic couplet and yes,there could be several movies commandeered in the above lines.
40
Thanks Ruairi,
I am wiser now.
10
Albert Einstein gets more than his fair share of quotes in the blogsphere so here is another that seems rather apropos to our headline post.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
—————
I personally have come to believe after much reading of science over the decades that life is ubiquitous through out the Universe.
BUT and it is a very Big “BUT” indeed when I look at the circumstances and the extraordinary sequence of extinction events including five major extinction events over the last three quarters of a billion years each of which and one in particular, The Permian Extinction Event, The Great Dying that came close to snuffing out life on this planet, all of that extraordinary sequence of events over those three quarters of a billion years created conditions where very entrenched low intelligence life forms and highly dominant species were wiped out leaving room for other minor and formerly highly vulnerable species who by their harsh selection and fight for survival had ever increasing levels of intelligence which enabled them to outwit their dominant predators of the time.
Each major Extinction Event led to ever increasing levels of intelligence until we, Homo Sapiens are the first species at an intelligence level, [ arguable in lots of individual cases ] that is capable of high level of complex abstract thinking including that about our origins as a life form and a species and where we go from here as a species and the Cosmos we exist in.
So my belief is that Life is ubiquitous across the universe.
BUT Intelligent life of a similar or more advanced form than our human species might be very, very rare indeed.
But without any doubt in my opinion, highly Intelligent Life will be out there or has been out there or will be out there somewhere, some time, past, present or future in the unimaginable vastness and the equally unimaginable time span of the existence of the Universe.
And why i believe Life, not necessarily intelligent Life is common across the Universe;
Organic molecules, the basic foundations needed for for life to form, begin and exist have been found right across the Universe in the form of highly specific radio wavelengths and spectrums;
ie; Newfound Molecule in Space Dust Offers Clues to Life’s Origins
Water / H2O, the other major requirement for Life to form and exist as far as our knowledge goes, is now known to be a common across the Universe and its spectrum wave lengths have been identified almost universally where ever cosmologists have turned their instruments to.
The late very well known cosmologist” Fred Hoyle” along with his colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe promoted the concept of Panspermia
Quoted from Wiki
The excreatory excuse that passes for these called scientists who have presented this paper, the subject of Jo’s headline post, should at some time in their “academic” career go and talk to a few cosmologists before they start presenting this rubbish as some sort of pseudo science.
The Universe is postulated to be around 13.7 billion years in existence which is as far back in time as the latest telescopes can still define the proposed form of the earliest Galaxies and then only through the medium of Gravitational Lensing, the presence of “Einstein Rings” around a large foreground galaxy directly behind large Galaxies only a fraction of the distance away across the universe.
Life, bacterial life mostly, has existed for around 3.7 billion years on this planet.
Life of a higher and more complex form than bacteria and molds has existed for around 850 million years.
Humanity’s origins at their possibly most primitive fire and rudimentary tool making levels of intelligence are now dated at close to 2.8 million years back in time.
A mere speck if that in the time span of the universes existence.
The radius of our detectable to other extra celestial civilisations, electro magnetic radiation bubble is now just over a century of light years in radius.
It is a mere 109 years since the first radio broadcast in 1906 which even with the most powerful detectors would be almost impossible for any other civilisation even if within that 100 light year radius bubble around Earth.
For comparison, the Milky Way Galaxy, the one you see each night as a great band of stars across the heavens and our home galaxy is a large but far from largest galaxy of around 100,000 light years across.
Which means that at best, the earliest electro magnetic waves, the very first of mankind’s radio waves are at best if they were at all detectable, still less than one tenth of the way across the whole of our home Galaxy.
So we have an astonishing tiny window in the period of the universe’s existence to detect any other extra terrestrial civilisations.
We can assume that any extra terrestrial civilisations also only had a tiny period during their existence, relative to the time of existence of the Universe to propagate any of their detectable electromagnetic radiation.
Intelligent life on Earth arose through a sequence of quite extraordinary catastrophic extinction events , each of which created the conditions for life forms of higher intelligence to take over until the next extinction event.
From that we can assume perhaps that such extinction events from volcanism and meteoroid impacts and young sun extreme solar flares and close by Super Nova’s etc [ Svensmark’s Cosmic Jackpot; a Stellar Revision of the story of Life ] will in nearly every case wipe out any more advanced life forms above that of any bacteria hidden deep in the earths surface layers.
And that limits the numbers and particularly the time frames in which civilisations on other far distant worlds in both the immense vastness of Space and Time could both invent and propagate detectable to us with our very primitive detection systems, electromagnetic radiation ie radio waves and radar.
In short we / they have missed each other by a couple of billion years in time and a couple of billions of light years in distance in the Cosmos and the probable relative in time, shortness of the existence of a advanced civilisation.
The events that theoretically could lead to the extinction of an entire civilisation are almost beyond counting in both the types of events and their severity .
And we know that this quite small planet, our Earth and our Home, around a quite stable Sun has experienced such near calamitous life extinction events a number of times past in its short cosmological existence.
There could be much more posted but my take is that the authors of this paper and its claims that global warming wiped out extra terrestrial civilisations which is why we can’t detect them is such arrant nonsense that the authors should just be sent back to the kindergarten and begin their education all over again before spouting off such arrant nonsense disguised as an opinion expressed as some sort of totally unprovable pseudo excuse for some sort of claimed Climate Science.
Calling it “Climate science” of course says it all as regards the levels of integrity and veracity and genuine levels of research that went into the composing of this paper. [ /sarc ]
71
If we pay academics to find that climate change due to CO2 does not exists that is exactly what they will find. Who can blame them. Where else can they get such employment? Its amazing that “science” discovers anything useful when polluted by politics.
31
Oh for a five or ten minute editing window on posts [ like the Weatherzone forums ] by the poster / commenter.
Edits and corrections; And I am in moderation if you read this before reading my post.
——-
The Universe is postulated to be around 13.7 billion years in existence which is as far back in time as the latest telescopes can still define the proposed form of the earliest Galaxies and then only through the medium of Gravitational Lensing, the presence of “Einstein Rings” around a large foreground Galaxy , rings which are created by the foreground Galaxy’s gravitational effects on the light radiation from a far distant and early Universe Galaxy directly behind it.
——–
“Which means that at best, the earliest electro magnetic waves, the very first of mankind’s radio waves are at best if they were at all detectable, still less than one
tenththousandth of the way across the whole of our home Galaxy.”30
Would the pulse from a nuclear bomb travel faster?
20
Nope! Nothing can go faster in the universe than the speed of Light in vacuum.
.
From Wiki
50
Which raises the questions;
Why is there such a limit to the speed of light and what creates that limit?
Why is the speed of light and its limits tied so closely to everything even energy, [ie; E=Mc2 ] in the Cosmos?
If there is a physical end or an edge to the Universe what lays beyond that edge ?
If there is no end or edge to the Universe then?
The last two questions which I have tried to get my mind around on many occassions just leads to a total mind block.
A comprehension that requires something that lies far, far beyond our most impossible imaginations.
50
It just comes about because of the relationship between the magnetic and electric fields. The speed of a EM wave is set by the permeability of the medium it is travelling through and the lowest permeability you can get is that of free space. I consider it an open question as to what the permeability of free space is beyond the event horizon of a black hole or even in the centre of a neutron star.
40
bobl
If you have a “medium” and you have “permeability” or either you have something that is measureable.
So what is that medium that has “permeability” that places the limit on the Speed of Light and the derived formula that directly connects the Speed of Light and defines the amount of energy in a given mass as per Einstein ?
So far I only know of two theories that suggest approximate solutions to this type of question and they are “String theory” with its 7 to 11 extra dimensions most of which are wrapped up in Planck sized single dimension packets.
The other theory is that space is filled with a Quantum Foam that permeates all of space and could provide the medium for the many and vast so called “fields” of every type of radiation that fill the entire known Universe.
Neither of these theories excites the rationality of most lay persons .
But then I guess the concept of Space / Time and the converting of mass into energy along with Quantum Mechanics and its predictions down to Quark levels excited many other than those involved in thinking about and deriving something understandable out of the ideas, hypotheses and real time experimental observations of a few decades back.
“Fields” of course being another hypothetical idea that explains how magnetic lines and etc can connect across vast distances seemingly without any indication as to where the end of another magnetic field line might be located for a few billionths of a second.
So “Fields” also need a medium across the Universe to work within.
It is a field of research that makes Climate Warming research appear to be operating at about the level of a baby learning to reach for a teat to get another fill.
41
Well ROM these are the mysteries of the universe aren’t they. Einstein built on Maxwell and tried to do away with the Aether but Quantum Mechanics has revisited this question and Einstein is likely wrong on this point as evidenced that a radio wave can pass at full power through a region at (near enough) absolute zero temperature. Hmm gotcha. Maxwell is gonna be right on that. Anyway the other problem for Einstein is that while he correctly showed that mass is relative, there is nothing to say that C is constant other than the fact that the permeability of free space tends to be consistent in this universe which makes it rather difficult to see what happens to light if the permeability is lower than that of free space.
20
If you’ll excuse my mixing cosmology and theodicy, maybe what we call the Universe is just a hypertoroidal bubble in God, expanding fast enough to prevent the will of God from reaching the Earth and overwhelming our free will.
40
That’s a very interesting concept.
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ROM,
To my mind the second question is the most interesting. I am not quite sure how Einstien derived the equation and I might try to find out. It does suggest a deeper scientific truth.
I have much the same problem there, but my response is to question the “Big Bang Theory”. which is another scientific sacred cow! Fred Hoyle did try to ridicule the whole idea when he coined then phase.
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I also question the “Big Bang” theory and most of all the so called “Inflation” that supposedly took an entire Universe from a “gravitational singularity” to a proto Universe on an enormous scale filled with photons of energy out of which mass started to condensed in the first few billionths of a second.
And what and where did” time” as in “seconds” fit into a concept where “space” and “time” are interchangeable but where one, “time” appears to run in one direction only and that is towards ever more “entropy”, a descent into ever more disorder or alternatively, less and less energy available to do work across the universe ?.
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ROM,
You are assuming that time progresses — always has progressed — at a constant rate.
Does it? Was an hour yesterday, or a million years ago, exactly the same absolute length as today? We can not tell as we are stuck in a reference frame that is travelling in this medium of time and space.
What if time (and therefore space) are variables?
As Douglas Adams wrote —
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tomOmason;
Totally agree and had the same question and nearly posted that but I had said enough already.
The writers of most cosmology merrily go on their cosmology writing epics without ever mentioning that little quirk of a question.
And it is because they simply don’t know the answer.
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I surmise that space and time are interdependent, and ensure that the speed of light is a constant. Time progresses faster or slower at any point in the universe but the local space expands or contracts to maintain the speed of light constant.
Why is the speed of light a constant — indeed why?
The ‘end of the Universe’ is where there is no space and no time, less than just empty, it is utterly void. A place where time does not progress and space is static (it neither expands nor contracts).
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‘Why is there such a limit to the speed of light and what creates that limit?’
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99113&page=1
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Do people honestly still push the ‘Venus is proof of runaway global warming’ claim with a straight face.
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What? CO2? Doh!
I thought it was Butterfingers.
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So we “explain everything with CO2” but not with physics? We just use the new “Law of the Universe” which over-rides all physics: “Thou shalt not increase carbon dioxide, methane, water vapour or anything that is considered by thy neighbour to be an IR-active gas in the atmosphere.”
What I just wrote to David Appell (seemingly a paid troll of the AGW proponents) on Roy Spencer’s current tread applies to many I suspect, so please allow a copy here Jo, something which I also feel the other David, your husband, should read …
Let’s just put it this way, David Appell:
I have read Pierrehumbert etc and found errors in their physics, a subject in which I am qualified and about which I know and understand more than they.
You have not convinced me, and will not convince me that the conjecture that IR-active gases like water vapor, CO2 and CH4 raise the surface temperatures of planets like Earth and Venus whilst I have serious objections to the hypothesis because, from my experience and understanding of radiative heat transfer, entropy and thermodynamics (which I suggest surpasses yours and Pierrehumbert’s et al) I see that the hypothesis assumes violations of the laws of physics and has incorrect application of Stefan-Boltzmann computations.
The paper you thought would answer my objections does not do so – it just reiterates the errors. In any event, how could a paper written last century answer questions I have asked only this month based on 21st century understandings of radiative heat transfer, entropy maximization and thermodynamics, about which I have published two papers and a book?
In contrast to what I see as incorrect physics in the radiative forcing “greenhouse” conjecture, I have used correct physics to explain what really does happen in all planets and satellite moons regarding the supporting of temperatures and the necessary heat transfers. If what I have explained is correct, then the greenhouse conjecture is false because the two are mutually exclusive.
So, I am not convinced (and will not be convinced) that you are basing your communication here upon correct physics, unless and until you satisfactorily respond in your own words to the questions on my blog which I shall now copy below for the convenience of new silent readers whom I am referring here from a hundred or so climate blogs and threads, so don’t let them down …
THE QUESTIONS THAT STUMP LUKES AND WARMISTS
(1) You claimed an incremental rise in surface temperature can be expressed as a function of an incremental increase in carbon dioxide radiation which would normally come from a colder region of the atmosphere. Is that a reasonable summation of a key element of the greenhouse hypothesis?
(2) Assuming “yes” then I say that (to convince me of that hypothesis) I need empirical evidence that the surface temperature is a function of such radiation, because if it is not, then neither is the derivative of the temperature. Is that correct?
(3) Assuming “yes” then please explain at least one point on the graph. Doing so does not prove that the function is correct, but it at least supports it and does not disprove it. If you can’t explain even a single temperature with correct physics then I am not convinced in any way, shape or form. Is that reasonable?
(4) Assuming “yes” then please explain a typical surface temperature of, say, 15°C by demonstrating (using any relevant data about any flux) how you calculate 15°C from such typical radiative flux alone.
I would appreciate discussion of the physics only.
When they claim that a mean flux of 390W/m^2 explains 15°C (because that is the blackbody temperature) ask them if they understand that temperature is only proportional to the fourth root of the flux. Then, get them to agree that the flux varies a lot, and ask for calculations for five equal regions having 20%, 60%, 100%, 140% and 180% of the mean flux. (They will get a lower mean temperature around 3°C.) Finally, ask them why they think they can add together solar radiation and back radiation in their Stefan-Boltzmann calculations. Suggest that, if an electric bar radiator is raising the temperature of an object to 350K, then, if there were sixteen such radiators and we add all the flux, Stefan Boltzmann calculations would give a temperature of 700K. Ask if they think that would happen. Assuming “no” then ask why they think they can add solar radiation and back radiation. They cannot claim to be able to do so because they have just agreed that adding the flux from all the radiators does not give a realistic temperature. Any one such example disproves their conjecture that radiative fluxes can be compounded in that way.
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“And humans invented air-conditioners and heaters to adapt to the environment before we geoengineered the climate.”
July 2, 2013: Obama’s Climate Worries About Africans Getting Cars, Air Conditioners, and Modern Houses
“if everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over”
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I fear this is proof that the humans on Earth descended from the occupants of the B Arc that departed from the planet Golgafrincham.
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Bang the rocks together, guys.
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A copy of part of the last transmission to humanity contains a little information as to what happened …
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That’s what happens when you fail to account for external factors in your model runs.
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Check out this spoofy YouTube from Ray Stevens on the global warming scam called: “The Global Warming Song” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORyzsMZPPUg
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Bob Carter
I thought I might share this here:
I wrote a letter to the editor of The Age and received a response.
I am not sure what the response will be. But if requested I will source material from the two blog posts devoted to Bob Carter.
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If you do this, try and extract a written, cast-iron guarantee that they will NOT edit it for publication without your pre-knowledge and pre-approval
I’m extremely cautious of MSM invites – such things tend to be deliberately poisoned apples
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Good advice Ian
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Apparently Lawrence Money has asked John Spooner to write the Obituary. A good choice in my opinion.
00
subscription required:
24 Jan: WSJ: Patrick J. Michaels: The Climate Snow Job
A blizzard! The hottest year ever! More signs that global warming and its extreme effects are beyond debate, right? Not even close.
An East Coast blizzard howling, global temperatures peaking, the desert Southwest flooding, drought-stricken California drying up—surely there’s a common thread tying together this “extreme” weather. There is. But it has little to do with what recent headlines have been saying about the hottest year ever. It is called business as usual…
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-snow-job-1453664732
found more of the article at junkscience:
24 Jan: Junkscience: The Climate Snow Job
http://junkscience.com/2016/01/the-climate-snow-job/
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It seems as though the authors of the piece Jo discusses have committed two cardinal sins. Jo has already dealt with the one involving the glaring defects in the science.
They have also, though, all but proclaimed that their research is fruitless and that similar research, by implication, is destined to remain so. While it may very well be the case that “astrobiology” is doomed to remain the least interesting science in the known universe (ah, the irony…) for the consecutive lifetimes of many, many giant tortoises, never mind university grants, climate “scientists” must be howling, “You’re not supposed to tell anybody that you already know it’s pointless!”
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torturing the figures:
25 Jan: ReutersCarbonPulse: Stian Reklev: India halfway to meeting 2020 GHG target despite rising emissions
India’s greenhouse gas output rose 64% between 2000 and 2010, but carbon emissions per unit of GDP fell 12% after 2005, half the reductions it aims to achieve by 2020, according to the nation’s first Biennial Update Report to the UNFCCC.
The report, not yet published on the UNFCCC website, showed that India emitted 2.136 billion tonnes of CO2e in 2010, not counting LULUCF, an increase of 64% on 2000, according to a statement by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
Around 12% of those emissions were stored in forest sinks, taking India’s final emissions for 2010 to 1.884 billion tonnes.
“The emission intensity of GDP has reduced by 12% from 2005 to 2010, on course to meeting the voluntary target of 20-25% reduction in emission intensity of GDP by 2020,” Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said in the report…
http://carbon-pulse.com/14632/
ITMOS, VITMOS, whatever:
25 Jan: ReutersCarbonPulse: COMMENT: Carbon markets firmly back on the agenda
By Ash Sharma, Special Adviser for Climate Change to the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation (NEFCO)
A Role for the Markets Enshrined in the Agreement
As expected, there is a framework for the use of market mechanisms or cooperative approaches as they are referred to. The nine paragraphs of Article 6 of the Agreement describe, albeit in the broadest possible terms, the use of “internationally transferred mitigation outcomes” (ITMOs to add to the UNFCCC alphabet soup of jargon) or loosely speaking, tradeable carbon credits. In particular, Article 6.4 establishes a mechanism…
Where will the demand come from?
A critical issue, as we have witnessed in the post-2012 carbon markets, may be a lack of demand for ITMOs. The European Union and US have already stated that they will not use international market mechanisms to achieve their INDCs. However, it is likely that such positions may evolve over the coming years as the UN negotiations continue, particularly if expected and required by the Agreement there is a ratcheting up of the level of ambition in the next round of INDCs (the 2018 “stocktake”)…
In the meantime, countries will continue to design, test and implement market-based domestic carbon pricing programmes, such (as) the multi-donor Transformative Carbon Asset Facility announced by the World Bank in Paris. In particular, there is scope for road-testing sectoral crediting mechanisms as part of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAS) or “learning by doing” type activities under broader INDCs, possibly developing verified ITMOs (VITMOs?)…
http://carbon-pulse.com/14627/
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New Video out
Their latest about record snow in Taiwan is quite good
But it gets interesting at 5:18 about planetary alignment!
It’s going to get colder me thinks?
Maybe 2015 was the LAST hottest year &
Bob Brown was arrested also in Tasmania:
Wonder why?
He has said:
“FELLOW Earthians,Why aren’t the intergalactic phones ringing?”
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25 Jan: ShanghaiList: [Update] Hell freezes over in Taiwan, death toll rises to 52 as cold front sweeps across the island
36 people died in Taipei, New Taipei and Taoyuan, and a further 16 in Kaohsiung, mostly from hypothermia and the onset of cardiovascular diseases.
In Taipei, the temperature fell to 4°C, the lowest level ever detected in the city in 44 years, and may drop further to 3°C early today…
The deaths come as Southern China experiences some of the coldest weather in living memory, with ice and snow gripping a part of the world which seldom sees temperatures in single digits…
http://shanghaiist.com/2016/01/24/hell_freezes_over_in_southern_china.php
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Not the slightest, tightest squawk from The Fourth Estate about this in NZ, save a short segment on how Hong Kong is struggling under record cold…..evah…and in spite of the difficulties on the East Coast of the US, how much fun they’re having skateboarding and skiing, towed behind vehicles… and this just after their breathless announcements about the hottest year evah….
They betray themselves at every turn.
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But!
If aliens had the technology to get here mightn’t they have been able to do a scan of the environment to see if they could take the helmets off?
And if it was safe to take them off and colonise then how the extinction?
Did they breed a liberal/environmental clique that ignored the science of the day to levels beyond our present lot and thereby the extinction?
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So the idea that the aliens all blew themselves up when they discovered nuclear fission is wrong?
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My favorite crazy science fiction moment is in Independence Day when hero genius computer person Jeff Goldblum flies to the hive with Will Smith and has a virus ready programmed to disable the alien ship’s defences. He plugs his laptop in and the plug fits? Try that between Apple and a PC.
So they use binary and RJ45 plugs and CPUs which are understandable without manuals and he can trick the alien operating system with a virus based on a fault in Windows? Was Bill Gates behind the alien invasion too? Were they an advanced species on Windows 11? What chance the wiring was right, the voltage levels, the bus system protocols, the timing, that the whole thing was compatible? In fact he understands alien computers so well he has an image of a laughing alien using their graphics system? Now that’s Science Fantasy. Like AGW.
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Obviously such studies are a product of a deranged imagination. Just ask the Hitchhikers Guide.
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The authors of the article, Chopra and Lineweaver, have it all wrong. The reason aliens refuse to communicate with us is because they refuse to interact with any intelligence that knowingly and willfully destroys its environment. Five years ago, two Penn State Faculty members, Seth D. Baum and Jacob D. Haqq-Misra, collaborated with a former NASA employee, Shawn D. Domagal-Goldman, to in part warn us that aliens might not look kindly on (a) our dumping CO2 into our atmosphere, and (b) using electronic means of communication (think emails, blogs, etc.) lying about that dumping (Journal Acta Astronautica, volume 68, 2011, pages 2114-2129). Baum, et. al, warned us that aliens might destroy us because we were destroying ourselves–doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either, but then almost nothing the CAGW acolytes argue makes much sense. Baum, et. al., didn’t mention the possibility that aliens might ignore us; but in my opinion, that’s the reason they refuse to communicate with us. See, aliens have figured out a way to null out their electromagnetic radiations in the direction of the Earth; and acting like an affronted spouse, they have ceased speaking to us.
At the time the Baum article was written, I recommended that to protect ourselves from alien destruction of the Earth because of CAGW we should immediately transmit a message to space letting the aliens know we really aren’t such a bad intelligence after all. Anthony Watts was kind enough to uest-post my response on his blog
(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/30/precautionary-principle-memo-ready-for-transmission/).
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Oh dear! I need more of this commodity called time to have a chance to read all the comments on this thread properly. It’s been interesting and entertaining too.
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Ah ha! My purple persona appeared! I now see a mistake in my email address…corrected.
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[…] Joanne Nova Global Worriers can explain everything with CO2 (hammer: meet nail, meet hail, meet ET […]
00
This is an interesting one for me. My elder daughter (the Global Warming believer astrophysicist) is actually working on just this – building models to determine whether the planets around distant stars could sustain life as on earth. She heads up a mega team of tax payers’ money sucking scientists to do just that. Interesting work, but I am not sure if there is a lot of value for earthlings at the moment. She is an Aussie, though, so I suppose I should be proud of her success – I am really, but I wish she would listen to me re Gerbil Worming.
Here’s the bio –
Biography:
Dr. Meadows is a Professor with the Astronomy Department and Director of the Astrobiology Program at the University of Washington. She is also the Principal Investigator for the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory Lead Team. She has a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of New South Wales, and a Ph.D. in Physics from the Astrophysics Department of the University of Sydney.
Dr. Meadows’ primary research interests are in the challenging area of using modeling and observations to determine how to recognize whether a distant extrasolar planet is able to harbor life. Her NAI Virtual Planetary Laboratory team develops innovative computer models that can be used to understand the terrestrial planet formation process, test planetary dynamical stability and orbital evolution, and simulate the environment and spectra of present day and early Earth, other Solar System planets, and plausible extrasolar terrestrial environments. This research group can assess the stability and habitability of newly discovered planetary systems and use their models to produce simulated data for extrasolar planet environments, to assist the design and development of future NASA planet detection and characterization missions.
In addition to her astrobiology research, Dr. Meadows remains a planetary astronomer, and her research interests also encompass remote-sensing observations and radiative transfer modeling of the lower atmosphere and clouds of Venus, the variable Earth, spectra of Titan and Neptune’s atmospheres, and the impacts of Comet SL-9 with Jupiter.
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Ahh… definitive WOFTAM.
Radiative transfer is only significant in an atmosphere that is not vertically convective. Prandtl, Grashof and Nüsselt. Never heard of them?
It seems that one would struggle to gain a PhD when one’s mind is not sufficiently narrowed.
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P.S. Your daughter may be familiar with the experience of Sallie Baliunas and not wish to suffer the slings and arrows.
Sallie was previously credited as scientific adviser to Sci-Fi series Star Trek: TNG and spin-offs.
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Surely aliens are capable of finding a more sophisticated way to keep out of sight than ruining their planet with
war ice age nuclear warboiling up their seas?00