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| Downtown Ubi Sunt |
We have been touching upon that theme in articles of the Dredd Blog system for a while.
It is absolutely clear and certain, as things stand now, that humanity will not always inhabit this planet, because a new planet is required.
Life After People in that sense, then, is axiomatic.
However, how it will happen is where the mystery comes into play.
Will we leave for a new home world after having conquered our problems?
That would give one meaning to "Life After People".
Or will we destroy all people here before we develop the futuristic space travel required to move to a new home world?
The latter episode would give an entirely different meaning to "Life After People" wouldn't it?
Quit dreaming. Star Trek and Star Wars are movies, not real life. We're not being visited by aliens for an obvious reason - even if they're out there, they're obviously too far away even to communicate with us. I'm a scientist who has worked for a satellite manufacturer for 30 years and I enjoy a good science fiction yarn as much as anyone. But it will be millenia (if even then) before humanity establishes a self-sustaining foothold that is truly independent of Earth. We'd better get used to the fact that this is our planet, and that we have at least as much a right to be here as any spotted owl or snail darter. Enviro-religion is a dead-end philosophy, because it's not grounded in reality, but in dreams and emotions.
ReplyDeleteIf you were a good scientist the first thing you would have learned would be to read what is before you so that you know what you are talking about when you respond to it.
ReplyDeleteIf you had done that you would have discerned that the subjects "alien" and "UFO" do not appear in the post you refer to, nor any Dredd Blog articles.
One wonders, then, why that was the first impulse that squeezed its way between your lips.
Do you move your lips when you read?
You are an example of why I have to write so many articles about the scientific text books being thrown away all the time.
You miss the facts then mix your resulting ignorant bias into the mix which you then call "science".
Thus, the textbook manufacturers love you because they don't have to use disappearing ink to establish planned obsolescence.
The budding new student scientists become uncomfortable, however, because they are less happy when someone does "a heckuva job" than when they do a competent job when comprehending what someone said.
The reason is that their tiring struggle to read a flawed textbook through the night, sweating out the test coming the next day, based upon your defective textbook, will have been wasted.
Like your comment and my having to correct your errors and give you a bad grade.
Dream a little, but wake up and read the pages.
Perhaps the self-proclaimed "scientist" should follow the example of our current president who was asked a few weeks ago why it took him a few days to respond to more bad news about the economic and banking crises. Pres. Obama simply quipped, "...because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."
ReplyDeleteOur planet is being polluted so badly, daily that some scientists are very concerned that we might not act fast enough to save ourselves from the global climate change that humanity has catapulted, not to mention deforestation. OK, I mentioned it. We are still cutting down trees in the equivalent of 10s of football field sized areas around the globe every hour.
Meanwhile, the oil, coal and nuclear industries are spending billions of dollars on TV PR trying to convince us all that they have the public's best interest as their primary goal.
Poppycock! B.S. Foul...Technical Foul!
If they did, why did they pay off the the U.S. big 3 automaker companies years ago to stop making such energy efficient cars and to keep that payoff quiet, and the fact that Henry Ford, the original, had made a flex-fuel engine a hundred years ago. Why?
I just watched your recommended program "After People" on the History Channel. Wow... Stunningly great program... Scintillating... Truly cerebral... Better than Carl Sagan's "Cosmos"... Or the first season of James Burke's "Connections"... Intellectually stimulating work of the highest order... Stunning revelations... Really superb... I've never seen a better television show... Can't wait until next week... It was almost as good as your insightful blogs.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of space travel (technically speaking, on a timeframe) is not "millenia" away, it's decades away, if that. The reason we're not closer to a Mars colony is because monied interests can't see much profit in it, and for 30+ years we've had governments that favor business over science and knowledge. Simply put, you can't get rich by wanting to explore the Universe so no one (with the power to do it) wants to bother.
ReplyDelete"we have at least as much right to be here as any spotted owl or snail darter" .. and they have at least as much right to be here as we do. The difference is WE can decide to NOT destroy them, they just live their lives. With our big brains comes a responsibility to use them.. and MOST "people" (shit flinging monkies is a closer to the truth description) choose NOT to use their brains.
Go check out www.thevenusproject.com and www.thezeitgeistmovement.com and see what we CAN do here, if only we stop being a species of shit flinging monkies and decide (as a whole) we want to "move forward".
Savantster
Savantster,
ReplyDeleteGreetings. Space travel of the sort required to colonize another earth-like planet will require speed-of-light travel ("c").
Even at "c" it would take 4 years to reach the nearest star in our galaxy and 4 years to get back.
It would take 150,000 years to cross the galaxy.
And we don't even have the physics to develop "c" concepts for non-photon components.
Decades? Do not bet anything serious on it.