RE: starship-design: Re: Aliens

["L. Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

Timothy,

At some point in development every star faring race would have to pass through a point where they radiated some sort of energy that is distinctly not a natural product. Whether it is simply radio, neutrinos, or gravitons is simply irrelevant. SOMETHING must be radiated at some point in time that would give away their presence. The only alternative is to assume a degree of paranoia that I find totally unbelievable.

The argument about our "potential" fusion drives is equally irrelevant. I wasn't speaking of anything so primitive. Same goes for timespan, remember Zeno's paradox? Apply the same line of reasoning to this argument. It doesn't matter how long we have been looking, there should be some trace visible in our sky AT EVERY SINGLE MOMENT.

The Federation of United Planets is pure anthropomorphic garbage. To ascribe human values, motives and logic to an alien species is totally unreasonable and dangerous to boot. No, if they are indeed out there, they are either (all) much too far away, too few or more likely, both. 

Lee Parker

-----Original Message-----
From:	Timothy van der Linden [SMTP:TLG.van.der.Linden@tip.nl]
Sent:	Saturday, July 05, 1997 6:40 PM
To:	starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu
Subject:	starship-design: Re: Aliens

Lee,

What signatures? Even our fusion designs that accelerate upto 0.5c radiate
less than 1/1,000,000,000 the power of the Sun. And to be frank, we probably
will only do a fusion design if we become really desperate to go to the stars.

Besides this, the timespan the transition may take, is likely to be short
compared to the time we have been looking more critical to the heavens.

And assuming that there are aliens going back and forth, they are likely to
have something like the "Federation of United Planets", where they will
invite every advanced civilisation that is ready to join them. Joining
probably means that certain scientific data is given to the new members.
This will decrease the timespan of development even more.

>You seem to be thinking biocontamination as in local here on Earth. I meant in
>the broader sense of interstellar.

I thought we were talking about "noticable traces". I wonder how we could
have noticed biocontamination somewhere else than on Earth.

Timothy

                                                          (o o)
------------------------------------------------------oOO--(_)--OOo---------
Ernst Eduard Kummer (1810-1893), a German algebraist, was rather poor at 
arithmetic. Whenever he had occasion to do simple arithmetic in class, he 
would get his students to help him. Once he had to find 7 x 9.

"Seven times nine," he began, "Seven times nine is er -- ah --- ah -- 
seven times nine is. . . ."

"Sixty-one," a student suggested. Kummer wrote 61 on the board.

"Sir," said another student, "it should be sixty-nine."

"Come, come, gentlemen, it can't be both," Kummer exclaimed. "It must be 
one or the other."