"Nasa planet hunter probe that 'dances with the Moon' will search for alien life" 'dances with the Moon' What condescending nonsense; even a child would be offended by it! I mean is there nothing which will make you disciples understand that NASA is patronising you? But hey, more jobs for the boys for the next hundred years, and everybody up one!** https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/04/18/spacex-launch-nasas-new-planet-hunter/ ** 'up one' means promotion.
While it is PAINFILLY obvious that you do not like or understand science, I wish to point out it is a process. The search for non terrestrial life is progressing at an incredible pace right now as we begin to explore space with telescopes and probes. In just the last 50yrs. we have found thousands of planets, multiple oceans outside Earth, gained massive understanding of genetics (even finding possible alien life on Earth in the Octopus), and are likely to find something relatively soon in our solar system that does not have terrestrial DNA. Just because YOU lack the imagination and motivation to explore does not place this limitation of the rest of us.
Not really planets and such. It is a dome, over a flat as a pancake terra firma, with lights that mimic the stars and planets. Quite an elaborate set up, put there by an old man with a long gray beard, with ire in his eyes. He lives in the clouds. Under the dome of lights we call stars and planets. There is a growing number of people who somehow believe this on this 6000 year old earth. So what you stated has no relevance to these folks. See the earth is actually the center of the universe, because that universe is an illusion, created by the dome with lights on it. The red shift is also an illusion, created by using red lights. Which gives us the illusion of the red shift, and the expanding universe. It ain't expanding, it is all trickery. A conspiracy which has been kept alive for a very long time. In order to become a scientist, one has to sign a NDA or they do not grant you the diploma. And you are bound so tightly to this that not a single scientist has ever told us the truth, and broke the conditions set forth by the NDA. Not a single one. So now you know the truth.
nearly everything you interact with is the result of science and the pursuit of knowledge...every technological advance NASA uses will filter it's way back to the rest of us at some point...onward NASA! go find those microbial aliens where ever they may be...
I agree that NASA makes claims and predictions that are illogical to help maintain their funding. There could well be life elsewhere in the university. i would say that it is likely. However encountering it or measuring it with a probe that will take 30,000 years just to reach the nearest solar system is not very practical. The problem with NASA is that it spends a lot of money trying to learn things that we may want to know but don't need to know. It doesn't matter that life exists elsewhere or where it might exist. We will never encounter it. The distances are simply too great.
well yes if there is life in another solar system the only hope of detecting/contacting it is with remote sensors, I agree we're never leaving this solar system. However that doesn't prevent NASA from looking for microbial life in our solar system, if it exists elsewhere in our planetary system then it'll exist everywhere in the galaxy. Even finding evidence of extinct life on Mars will suffice. My money is on finding evidence of life with various sensors on distant solar systems before we attain the technical capability to reach the remote moons of Jupiter or Saturn.
And what happens when we don't share a view outwards? We start fretting over the hurt feelings of the safe and well fed. Or start wars. Or spend money on 'art'. We NEED a 'common enemy'. It's what kept us more or less progressing all this time. Take that away, and 'progress' becomes a cancer which eats us alive.
imo 'art' is the equivalent of science, most people take it for granted but it surrounds us everyday it's an essential part of civilization/humanity.
Sure, but it doesn't need tax payer dollars spent on it. It's a 'luxury' item (unlike science), and should always be self-funded for that reason.
Yes, but do you not feel offended when NASA talks down to you with idiotic stuff like the example I gave. I mean maybe I'm missing something - for example, what does 'dancing with the Moon' convey to you?
The discovery of life on another planet would be monumental in the long term. It would represent another step out of the dark ages. It is difficult to place a specific value on paradigm changing events or discoveries, but it does exist, and often profoundly so. Just as there was value in recognizing that the world is governed by cause and effect, and not magic, or that the earth is not the center of the universe, there is value in knowing that we are not alone. Science is exploratory by nature. We have no way to know what value me be gained by learning about other planetary systems or where life is likely to occur. But it is all a part of our universe and the laws of physics apply everywhere. We can certainly expect to gain useful knowledge as we continue to explore the cosmos. And you never know, you might just find an ET out there broadcasting the Encyclopedia Galactica, if you know they could be there. SETI looks for RF signals. But here on earth, the age of radio is quickly dying, with a lifespan of less than 150 years. So, soon, we would no longer be able to detect us, and the core logic for radio SETI fails. They may not use radio. It may have passed into the their dustbin of history a million years ago. What might be the value of learning something about beings a million years more advanced than us?
330 million / 3.8 trillion - the Federal Budget - is 0.008%. In risk analysis, one considers the potent risk vs the potential benefit. When you consider something like the lottery, and whether it makes sense to buy a lottery ticket, risk analysis concludes that it makes sense to buy one ticket every once in awhile. The risk of a few dollars is insignificant. The potential benefit of winning the lottery is very large. Since you have almost no chance of winning, buying more tickets doesn't makes sense - you still have almost no chance of winning. But it does make sense to keep the possibility of winning open, by buying one ticket. The average income is something around $60,000, IIRC. If you buy one ticket a month at $1 each, that is 0.02% of the yearly income. So if we assume that we could win the cosmic lottery by searching for alien life, then risk assessment logic suggests that there is about 2.5 times the advantage [less risk] in sending out one probe a year to search for alien life, than to buy one lottery ticket per month. Interestingly, the cost of the space probe is about $1 per person.
More monumental would be the discovery that life only exists on earth. Logic tells me that there has to be life elsewhere. There are billions of solar systems like ours. It is illogical to think that life only exists on this one.
I agree but it is still a leap of faith. Knowing is not the same as believing. When we know for sure, the collective consciousness of humanity will forever be altered.
'dancing with the moon' nothing, it's just words. I suspect they're just trying attract people to read the article.
I couldn't have put it better myself. But then 'space stuff' has become a global industry now, so they need all the funding they can get to sustain their lucrative incomes and ensure job security. If anyone doesn't want to work for a living but has a wild imagination and the gift of the gab, 'cosmology' is the way to go. They can say whatever they like irrespective of how off-the-wall it is, but never need to prove any of it. Wish that I could get a piece of the action.
Are you just going to keep doing that, every day? Because it's going to be a long, long time before NASA launches probes to check out the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
Well, someone could always come back to this thread years into the future and revive it. Assuming this forum still exists.
