B5 realism vs. ST idealism
wodo...@gmuvax.gmu.edu
realism in sci-fi whereas the Star Trek series presented an idealistic
view of the future?
For example, Lt. Cdr.Ivanova didn't seem too thrilled or too positive
about who she was going to vote for for Earth president. Whereas in ST
they are almost fanatical about obeying the Prime Directive, a very idealistic
rule.
Bill O'Donnell
wodo...@gmuvax.gmu.edu
Vienna, VA USA
David Karger
they pulled a star trek: took a completely alien piece of technology,
and within 1 day, had it decoded to the point that they could actually
pronounce the name of the scientist involved (as well as tell the
whole history of a planet). Can anyone imagine such a thing being
possible?
Athos
> Would it be a fair statement to say that Babylon5 presents a new
>realism in sci-fi whereas the Star Trek series presented an idealistic
>view of the future?
I think one reason there is a sense of realism in the show is that
I noticed the other night watching the credits that Harlan Ellison
is a creative consultant for the show. He is a very dark and
disturbing writer. His worldview may be imapcting the style of
Babylon5.
Happy trails,
-----------------------------------------------------------
Greg Olsen
Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Wildlife
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE 68583-0814
Phone: 402-472-9869
e-mail: gol...@unlinfo2.unl.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------
Chris M Aylott
: Would it be a fair statement to say that Babylon5 presents a new
: realism in sci-fi whereas the Star Trek series presented an idealistic
: view of the future?
: For example, Lt. Cdr.Ivanova didn't seem too thrilled or too positive
: about who she was going to vote for for Earth president. Whereas in ST
: they are almost fanatical about obeying the Prime Directive, a very idealistic
: rule.
Less idealistic than Trek, certainly. I'm not quite sure B5 is a new
realism, however. Here's my thinking:
While one of my favorite things about B5 is its explicit premise of
people being fundamentally the same as they are today (They still read
newspapers, get married, cheat on their taxes, etc.), it's still an epic
storyline. Sinclair and Co. (I have a sudden image: "Michael Garibaldi,
Sinclair's Pal" -- eep!) are at the focal point of great events. It is
the Dawn of the Third Age of Mankind, empires are going to rise and fall,
and Big Things are in store for Our Heroes.
(This is not a complaint, by the way -- I like epics a lot.)
A truly "realistic" version of B5 to my mind would be about the people
NOT at the focus of empire-changing events. Hill Street Blues comes to
mind as a show that was not only realistic in characterization (the way
Joe's B5 is) but also focused on people who, while important to their own
little world (Frank Furillo was VERY important to the people in the
station and the community who depended on him), aren't part any grand
scheme. Ordinary schmoes, basically.
Someday, I want to see a dramatic ("Red Dwarf" is brilliant, but doesn't
count...) SF show about Ordinary Schmoes in Space...
Aylott
al bell
Kirk and McCoy were good guys, for example, but I don't know that they
were really all that idealistic. They wanted to do good and meet chicks.
But (and I'm saying this as a fan of ST:The Old Show and of B5 and a
respecter of some episodes of ST:TNG) I don't get the feeling there's
really a controlling moral idea ordering the B5 universe. You can debate
what the idea really is in ST:TOS, but I always have the feeling it's
there. I think ST:TNG thinks its controlling idea has something to
do with utopian decency but really is just a Mensa power trip. (Here's
a universe where the smart kids run everythin!)
I'm not sure that's really JMS's fault, or a fault at all. The 60s were
a time when people thought they knew what they were about. The '90s
aren't. My suspicion is that, 30 years from now, we'll be able to
pick out '90s TV shows and movies as the ones where characters were
pretending to have some reason for living but not really having any
clue at all.
Gharlane of Eddore
Certainly. Two classic examples in written SF that you might enjoy are
"NOT IN THE LITERATURE" by George O. Smith, one of the "Venus Equilateral"
stories from the forties, which you can find in "THE COMPLETE VENUS
EQUILATERAL."
A better one, one I've used as a class example, is "OMNILINGUAL," by
H. Beam Piper. It was published around 1958, and it's easy to find
in many SF collections.
The point of both of these stories is that, when dealing with technology,
it doesn't matter what the alien civilization's units of measurment,
language, or numeration system might be; physical constants are universal.
Hydrogen is always hydrogen, the value of "pi" is always "pi," and so on.
Since the script of "INFECTION" establishes that there is an academic
specialization that deals with alien technology, a database of
translational referents and an archive of software analysis tools
is a safe assumption.
The alien critter's use of EA English is also quite defensible, since
it had access to the central nervous system of its host, and probably
to the computers and test instrumentation in the lab. (A sentient AI
artifact, an intelligent weapon, can logically be presumed capable of
robbing enemy systems of information and analyzing it.)
For me, these aspects of the script were quite palatable. My willing
suspension of disbelief failed, or at least limped severely, in relation
to the critter's energy output, its lack of internal clock, and the
way it neatly vanished at the end; that latter, and the acquisition of
its mass from nowhere, made it hard for me to think of the script as SF,
and I think of it as fantasy. But it was *fun*, anyway.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Londo: Do you know what the last Xon said, just before he died? |
| Garibaldi: No, what? |
| Londo: AARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH! |
Ed Dambik
> and Big Things are in store for Our Heroes.
>
> (This is not a complaint, by the way -- I like epics a lot.)
>
> A truly "realistic" version of B5 to my mind would be about the people
> NOT at the focus of empire-changing events.
> Someday, I want to see a dramatic ("Red Dwarf" is brilliant, but doesn't
> count...) SF show about Ordinary Schmoes in Space...
Do the Yuppies in Space found on a-certain-other-show-which-shall-
remain-nameless count?
IO2...@maine.maine.edu
says:
>
>In article <Co9wF...@world.std.com>,
>Chris M Aylott <Ayl...@world.std.com> wrote:
>>A truly "realistic" version of B5 to my mind would be about the people
>>NOT at the focus of empire-changing events. Hill Street Blues comes to
>>mind as a show that was not only realistic in characterization (the way
>>Joe's B5 is) but also focused on people who, while important to their own
>>little world (Frank Furillo was VERY important to the people in the
>>station and the community who depended on him), aren't part any grand
>>scheme. Ordinary schmoes, basically.
>
>thinkers, and the ones who will be important for generations to come
>(pretty much the type of people that the Soul Hunter listed). Then,
>there are also going to be the "normal" people, who live normal lives
>and aren't "important" in the grand historical scheme of things.
>
>A "realistic" drama can deal with either (e.g., we can have a WWII
>movie that deals with Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin--or we can have
>a WWII movie that deals with a British family living through the
>Battle of Britain. Both can be realistic in their own way, but they
>each have a different scope. I agree with you that a show that focuses
>on "normal" people, though its scope is "limited," can be just as
>interesting as a show with a broader scope; but either can be realistic
>if executed well).
>
There's another thought I've been thinking. Both ST and B5 could
be considered heroic epics in space, with the captain/commander
being the hero. Epics generally are centered around massive,
world-shaking events. In this light, it would make sense for
Babylon 5 to be at the pivot point of five empires.
Another implication: what if Sinclaire is a tragic hero? What
happens then is the hero's friend -- in this case, Garibaldi,
who fits the "friend" mold by having common sense the hero lacks --
ends up dead. Better enjoy Garibaldi while you can!:-)
>Shawn
"Tongue-tied & twisted just an Earth-bound misfit, I."
-- Pink Floyd, "Learning to Fly"
PLEASURE TALKIN' 2 YA:: MIKE GALLAGHER(**IO21173, UMAINE SYSTEM**)
IO2...@maine.maine.edu
for one of those ST/B5 flame wars that I've had my fill of. But
I'd still like to put in my $0.02.
It seems to me that both B5 and ST are inherently UNREALISTIC.
My evidence for this statement is that both shows are based on the same
premeise:
1. Faster than light interstellar travel and communication.
2. Contact with sentient spacefaring extraterrestials.
It's impossible to realistically portray either of these because
NEITHER HAS HAPPENED YET (depending on your feelings towards alien
abductees.) Furthermore, the scientific community seems to delight
in proclaiming both 1 & 2 IMPOSSIBLE. #1 is written off by relativity,
and though no one has directly challeneged #2, I keep reading statements
that "we have no evidence of planets orbiting other stars in the galaxy."
So, on both scores, ST:TOS/TNG/DS9/VOYAGER and B5 aren't just unrealistic
-- they're total bullshit.
So, what's JMS to do? The only thing he can -- create good stories
around strong characters and present them with the best production
values he can achieve. He can also lay down the rules his universe
runs by and adhere to them religiously. This will make the series
believable to the viewers. But "realistic"? On that count, it's
already lost.
Steven Sharp
>
>For me, these aspects of the script were quite palatable. My willing
>suspension of disbelief failed, or at least limped severely, in relation
>to the critter's energy output, its lack of internal clock, and the
>way it neatly vanished at the end; that latter, and the acquisition of
>its mass from nowhere, made it hard for me to think of the script as SF,
>and I think of it as fantasy. But it was *fun*, anyway.
Yes, organic systems have advantages but high energy production ain't one of
them. The disappearance of the body modifications was just plain ridiculous.
There wasn't even any good reason in the plot to use such ludicrous science.
The assistant could have died on the spot and it wouldn't really have made
any difference (Franklin could have gotten his information elsewhere). I
also had to wonder why the destruction of Ikarra impacted the programming
of the thing when it didn't affect the ones that destroyed Ikarra. It reeked
of Kirk talking a computer into self-destructing. If you want to use its
programming against it, point out that the host body isn't pure Ikarran
and should be destroyed. Of course, if that were a requirement the weapon
wouldn't have been given the ability to take over a non-Ikarran (but why
give it that capability in the first place, with so many loyal Ikarrans
available when it was built).
Sir Robyn Blaber
>
>Another implication: what if Sinclair is a tragic hero? What
>happens then is the hero's friend -- in this case, Garibaldi,
>who fits the "friend" mold by having common sense the hero lacks --
>ends up dead. Better enjoy Garibaldi while you can!:-)
Actually, in Hamlet (a famous tragedy by) Horatio (Hamlit's friend)
is about the ONLY character who makes it to the end. Perhaps Garibaldi
will be the common thread throughout the next 5 years. Then the
Vorlon Fortinkosh will arrive to find everyone dead.
Just a bad guess.
Robyn Blaber
Sir Robyn Blaber
> 1. Faster than light interstellar travel and communication.
> 2. Contact with sentient spacefaring extraterrestials.
>
>both 1 & 2 IMPOSSIBLE.
On 2, the scientific community has spent money on SETI. On 1, physicists
are working toward a unified theory. Remember that relativity could just
be a kludge for Michealson-Morley's failed experiment. (flame-bait)
In other words, get an imagination. The realism thats lost in ST is not
nearly so much in the poorly handled technobabble, but in the way that
none of the characters seem to have characteristics.
Robyn Blaber
David A Bergman
difficulties, #2 is by no means. Evidence of planets have been discovered
recently. Also, I think it was Dirac who came up with a "formula" for the
odds of intelligent life elsewhere. The probability ended up rather high
althoug it's essentially BS as most of the constants were guessed.
Aaron
Chris M Aylott
: Do the Yuppies in Space found on a-certain-other-show-which-shall-
: remain-nameless count?
If you mean either Trek, no... I guess my definition of this type of
"realistic" (i.e. non-epic) show is that the characters would NEVER save
the Federation/Earth Alliance/Bajor. The Trek characters are always among
the most important people in their world, since they save it regularly. I
want to see SF about UNIMPORTANT people someday... a show about
Heinleinian Free Traders on a tramp ship trading through the Galaxy could
be FUN.
Aylott
David Adrien Tanguay
The Ikarans died only a thousand years ago. I believe it has been stated that
the Centauri were around that long ago (and so the Minbari probably were too),
so maybe there are still records of the Ikaran language. The interface to
the equipment might also follow a standard that was picked up by/from the
Centauri.
--
David Tanguay d...@Thinkage.on.ca d...@Thinkage.com uunet!thinkage!dat
Thinkage, Ltd. Kitchener, Ontario, Canada [43.40N 80.47W]
F. Sullivan Segal
Sir Robyn Blaber <rbl...@sol.UVic.CA> wrote:
>In article <94105.155...@MAINE.MAINE.EDU> <IO2...@MAINE.MAINE.EDU> writes:
>> 2. Contact with sentient spacefaring extraterrestials.
>>
>>both 1 & 2 IMPOSSIBLE.
>
FTL is theorized in at least two cases that I know of. Muons,
which have never been observed except as missing mass in an
unbalanced reaction are suggested to be travelling backwards
in time. Secondly, some subatomic particles may travel faster
than light under certain conditions (e.g: gravitons (if they
exist) which escape a singularity.)
--
-F. Sullivan Segal
_______________________________________________________________
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/V\ E-Credibility: (n -- ME) The unguaranteed likelyhood that
' the electronic mail you are reading is genuine rather than
someone's made up crap.
_______________________________________________________________
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Mail to: flet...@netcom.com
Mike Montour
> >>So, on both scores, ST:TOS/TNG/DS9/VOYAGER and B5 aren't just unrealistic
> >>they're total bullshit.
>
> FTL is theorized in at least two cases that I know of. Muons,
> which have never been observed except as missing mass in an
> unbalanced reaction are suggested to be travelling backwards
> in time. Secondly, some subatomic particles may travel faster
> than light under certain conditions (e.g: gravitons (if they
> exist) which escape a singularity.)
*BZZZZZT* Sorry, Muons most certainly have been observed. I've seen (well,
"seen" via particle counters) millions of them myself. Muons are similar
to electrons, with the same charge but a mass 200 times greater. They are
unstable, and decay with a half life of 2*10^-6 seconds into an electron
and a pair of neutrinos. Like electrons, they can be have either a
negative or positive charge (particle and antiparticle).
There is an interpretation that any "antiparticle" is moving backwards in
time. However in actual experiments, antimuons behave just like any
other normal particle. They're created at a target, move down the beamline
with a speed less than c, and then hit whatever you're studying. No FTL
that I am aware of.
As for "missing mass in an unbalanced reaction," it sounds like you might
be talking about the neutrino. It was originally postulated to explain
missing momentum (and lepton number) in certain reactions. They are very
hard to detect, and can pass right through the earth without hitting
anything. To see them you need a large tank of liquid (e.g. D2O) buried
deep underground, surrounded by photomultiplier tubes.
It is not known whether neutrinos are massless (and therefore travel at the
speed of light) or have a small (<6eV, last time I checked) mass and travel
at just under the speed of light. However, they do not go FTL.
Babylon 5 uses "Tachyons", which are fictional particles that travel faster
than light. I think the only "evidence" for Tachyons is that Einstein's
theories don't explicitly forbid them, as long as they never slow down
below the speed of light.
Quantum mechanics offers some situations that appear to give FTL
communication. One is to combine an electron and a positron, giving a pair
of photons moving in opposite directions, and with the same polarization.
Because measurements in quantum mechanics affect the system being measured,
there's some way of manipulating one of these photons to produce a
detectable change in the other, thereby giving "instantaneous"
communication over an arbitrary distance. [I don't remember the details of
this - it may not be true. No flames, please.]
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled discussion of Sinclair's
big butt.
-Mike
David Goldfarb
)Quantum mechanics offers some situations that appear to give FTL
)communication. [example deleted]
This is communication in the sense that something that happens
in one place affects what happens in another place, faster than light
can travel between them. Unfortunately, there is no way to exploit
this for sending messages.
Imagine you and I have a pair of coins. These coins have the
magic property that, after one is flipped for the first time, the other
is guaranteed to come up the same face when *it* is flipped for the first
time -- even if they are flipped only seconds apart, light-years apart.
(Yes, I know about the relativity of simultaneity, but we don't really
need to worry about it at the moment.) Clearly there is some sort of
communication between the coins, or how does one know what side the other
came up? But equally clearly, there is no way to use this to send a message;
you didn't know in advance what face the two coins were going to show.
David Goldfarb |
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu |"It doesn't matter. Don't you see? Nothing matters!"
gold...@UCBOCF.BITNET | -- Fredric Brown, "Come and Go Mad"
gold...@soda.berkeley.edu |
Daniel M. Israel
In article <2onql7$l...@nntp2.Stanford.EDU>, dab...@leland.Stanford.EDU (David A Bergman) writes:
> Also, I think it was Dirac who came up with a "formula" for the
> odds of intelligent life elsewhere.
Frank Drake.
--
"Brother, you can't go to jail for what you're Daniel M. Israel
thinking, or for that "oooo!" look in your <cr...@vulcan.giss.nasa.gov>
eyes. You're only standing on the corner Goddard Institute of Space Studies
watching all the girls go by." -Most Happy Fella 2880 Broadway, New York, NY
David W. Smith
>
> For me, these aspects of the script were quite palatable. My willing
> suspension of disbelief failed, or at least limped severely, in
> relation to the critter's energy output, its lack of internal clock,
> and the way it neatly vanished at the end; that latter, and the
> acquisition of its mass from nowhere, made it hard for me to think of
> the script as SF, and I think of it as fantasy. But it was *fun*,
> anyway.
>
Who's to say he didn't eat some folks down in Gray 5 along the way, eh?
******************************************************************************
* David W. Smith, Member Technical Staff * My opinions are my own *
* Advanced Micro Devices, Austin TX *********************************
* Embedded Proces
Max Rible
>Babylon 5 uses "Tachyons", which are fictional particles that travel faster
>than light. I think the only "evidence" for Tachyons is that Einstein's
>theories don't explicitly forbid them, as long as they never slow down
>below the speed of light.
There isn't any "evidence" for tachyons, but various different attempts
to figure out how reality works end up with equations whose solutions
correspond to particles we're familiar with, and another solution that
predicts that a particle exists that travels faster than light. That
got dubbed a "tachyon" (from the Greek for "swift", I think). Thus far
they simply keep showing up in different guises as things that pop out
of theory...
--
/-----------------------v-----------------------------------------\
| Max Rible | "Not quite as impressive a volcano god |
| mo...@netcom.com | as we were led to expect!" - Sam & Max |
\-----------------------^-----------------------------------------/
Michael Zebrowski
> 1. Faster than light interstellar travel and communication.
>
> 2. Contact with sentient spacefaring extraterrestials.
>
>NEITHER HAS HAPPENED YET (depending on your feelings towards alien
>abductees.) Furthermore, the scientific community seems to delight
>in proclaiming both 1 & 2 IMPOSSIBLE. #1 is written off by relativity,
>and though no one has directly challeneged #2, I keep reading statements
>that "we have no evidence of planets orbiting other stars in the galaxy."
>
conclusivly(sp?) that the Earth was in the center of the universe.
How about Aristotle? His physics was accepted as fact for roughly 1500
years, yet today it seems rather silly.
My point is that just because one theory that has been around for less
than 100 years is the currect fad, it does not mean that it is 100%
correct. So it is rather useless to state that something is impossible,
rather it is better to say that based upon out current understanding of
the universe, FTL seems improbable.
Mike Z
James Nicoll + Jasmine
David Adrien Tanguay <d...@thinkage.on.ca> wrote:
>kar...@Jove.Stanford.EDU (David Karger) writes:
>>I just saw _Infection_ for the first time yesyerday, and noticed that
>>they pulled a star trek: took a completely alien piece of technology,
>>and within 1 day, had it decoded to the point that they could actually
>>pronounce the name of the scientist involved (as well as tell the
>>whole history of a planet). Can anyone imagine such a thing being
>>possible?
>
>The Ikarans died only a thousand years ago. I believe it has been stated that
>the Centauri were around that long ago (and so the Minbari probably were too),
>so maybe there are still records of the Ikaran language. The interface to
>the equipment might also follow a standard that was picked up by/from the
>Centauri.
A thousand years is all that separates the Song from the Qing, or
only a tad longer than Andorra has been around. The Old Kingdom in Egypt
lasted almost that long. It'd be a little alarming if *no* high-tech
culture dated back more than a thousand years, because that would mean
the probable life-span of a high-tech culture is shorter than that.
There is evidence that the Ikarans had a fair amount of contact
with the Extra-Ikaran cultures: the Great Maker cult is found in at least
one other species [And the fact that a purity fanatic used the term may mean
it originated on Ikara, or that the introduction to Ikara was a long time
before the purity fanatics came to power]. Maybe their language survived,
where they did not. A possibly bad example: If the Middle East got destroyed,
I'd still expect Arabic to survive, because the cannonical version of the
Koran is the Arabic one, and Islam stopped being a predominantly Arabic
religion a long time ago.
James Nicoll
--
"If you keep doing that, you'll flip the chair, ram your face into the register,
breaking your teeth. The register will flip over, hit you in the face, drive
glass splinters into your eye, and you'll rebound into the wall and get
impaled on a hook." "I know what I'm doing."
Travis S Casey
>conclusivly(sp?) that the Earth was in the center of the universe.
>How about Aristotle? His physics was accepted as fact for roughly 1500
>years, yet today it seems rather silly.
>My point is that just because one theory that has been around for less
>than 100 years is the currect fad, it does not mean that it is 100%
>correct. So it is rather useless to state that something is impossible,
>rather it is better to say that based upon out current understanding of
>the universe, FTL seems improbable.
Sorry, neither of these is true. Ptolemy stated that the Earth was
the center of the universe, and others accepted his statement on
faith. He did not in any way, shape, or form PROVE that the Earth
was the center of the universe.
The same thing with Aristotle; he advanced his version of physics
without any proof, and it was accepted purely on his say-so.
The Greeks did not have "science" as we understand it today; that is,
the Greeks simply came up with hypotheses about how the world works
and argued about them; whoever could convince the most people won. In
the scientific method, however, one is supposed to *test* hypotheses
to see whether they actually work, and to communicate his/her ideas to
others so that they can also test them, and have a chance to come up
with improvements/alternatives to his/her theory.
Your point is still correct, of course; the understanding that we now
have of the universe is not necessarily completely correct. I simply
wished to correct your first couple of statements.
--
Travis S. Casey <ca...@cs.fsu.edu>
FAQ maintainer for rec.games.design and alt.vampyres (interim)
No one agrees with me. Not even me.
Mike Montour
> Mike Montour <mmon...@netinfo.ubc.ca> wrote:
> )Quantum mechanics offers some situations that appear to give FTL
> )communication. [example deleted]
> This is communication in the sense that something that happens
> in one place affects what happens in another place, faster than light
> can travel between them. Unfortunately, there is no way to exploit
> this for sending messages.
> Imagine you and I have a pair of coins. These coins have the
> magic property that, after one is flipped for the first time, the other
> is guaranteed to come up the same face when *it* is flipped for the first
> time -- even if they are flipped only seconds apart, light-years apart.
> (Yes, I know about the relativity of simultaneity, but we don't really
> need to worry about it at the moment.) Clearly there is some sort of
> communication between the coins, or how does one know what side the other
> came up? But equally clearly, there is no way to use this to send a message;
> you didn't know in advance what face the two coins were going to show.
Ah, but does the act of flipping force the coin thereafter to be in an
eigenstate of the measurement operator? The photon scenario is a little
more complicated, because of the nature of quantum "measurements". Again,
this is as I remember it, and may be wrong. If so, consider it as a homework
problem to find why it's wrong (and not as flamebait).
The following apparatus is set up on a long, straight optical bench. This
all takes place in a single inertial reference frame, to avoid (or at least
defer) relativity problems.
---|----------------------/-*-/---------------------------\-->Detector
Sender Midpoint Receiver
Between the sender and the receiver is a source of photon pairs,
"*" on the diagram. By some quantum process (eg. electron-positron
collision) it produces two photons with the same polarization and opposite
momenta. We collimate the output, to produce beams going left and right.
These beams then each go through a polarizer "/". Thus, we have two
identical polarized beams radiating away from the midpoint.
There is a polarizer at the "sender", which can either be aligned with the
polarizers at the source (denoted "/") or at 45 degrees to it ("|"). If in
the "/" state, the beam is unaffected and goes off to infinity. If "|",
each photon has a 50% chance of getting through. Those that do are then
polarized in the "|" direction, rotated 45 degrees from the original beam.
At the receiver we have a polarizer at 90 degrees to the source polarizers,
denoted "\".
The "magic" here is that, because both photons were created in a single
process, they ALWAYS have the same polarization. If we measure one, we know
the other, no matter how many times we make the measurement. Quantum
measurements leave the system in an "eigenstate of the measurement
operator", so by measuring one photon it is possible to set the
polarization of the other instantaneously (since both photons are described
by a single wavefunction).
If the "sender" polarizer is set to "/", the beam remains polarized in the
"/" direction. Therefore, no photons get through the receiver polarizer
"\", and the detector gets no signal. If we set the receiver to "|", then
half the photons get through, and those that do are now polarized in the
"|" direction. This also sets the polarization of the other beam,
instantaneously. When these photons hit the "\" polarizer at the receiver,
they have a 50% chance of getting through. Therefore, some will get
through and the detector will register a signal.
So, we have a mechanism for communication. The detector receives a signal
if the source polarizer is set to "|", none if it is set to "/". This is
somewhat statistical, so requires several photons per bit to ensure a low
error rate. However, this is not a problem, it just restricts the maximum
bit rate. And there you are, FTL communication. It might work - it's at
least somewhat plausible in science-fiction stories. I'll believe it before
I buy into "Anaphasic Energy" any day.
Oh, and given a state |y> and observable a, "<a> = <y|A|y>" satisfies
"a|e> = A|e>" for some eigenstate |e> and real eigenvalue a of the
Hermetian operator A, and all that.
-Mike
Eric Pawtowski
David Adrien Tanguay <d...@thinkage.on.ca> wrote:
>kar...@Jove.Stanford.EDU (David Karger) writes:
>>I just saw _Infection_ for the first time yesyerday, and noticed that
>>they pulled a star trek: took a completely alien piece of technology,
>>and within 1 day, had it decoded to the point that they could actually
>>pronounce the name of the scientist involved (as well as tell the
>>whole history of a planet). Can anyone imagine such a thing being
>>possible?
Well, since the guy involved was an archeologist who had been
studying Ikara for months, if not years, how likely it
is depends on weather or not that was the *first* piece of
Ikaran technology he had found, or mierely the first organic weapon.
Perhaps he already knew how to speak ancient Ikaran before ever comming to B5.
--
****epaw...@polaris.async.vt.edu or epaw...@vt.edu********************
Although the first address will be no longer valid as of June!
***************************************************************************
Eric H Neilsen
>In article <2otkrv$r...@agate.berkeley.edu> gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb) writes:
>> Mike Montour <mmon...@netinfo.ubc.ca> wrote:
>> )Quantum mechanics offers some situations that appear to give FTL
>> )communication. [example deleted]
[stuff deleted]
>"*" on the diagram. By some quantum process (eg. electron-positron
>collision) it produces two photons with the same polarization and opposite
>momenta. We collimate the output, to produce beams going left and right.
>These beams then each go through a polarizer "/". Thus, we have two
>identical polarized beams radiating away from the midpoint.
>
At this point, the correlation goes away. Only the first measurement
(the first polarizer) will result in any sort of correlation. From then
on, the two photons act completely independantly of each other, and the
remainder of the scheme falls apart.
>The "magic" here is that, because both photons were created in a single
>process, they ALWAYS have the same polarization. If we measure one, we know
I'm pretty sure this is incorrect. Only the first time they are measured
will thay have the same polarization.
I do recall seeing an explicit proof that quantum correlation cannot
even theoretically be used for FTL communication. What it was or how
it went is lost somewhere in assorted piles of quantum notes...
-Hil
--
E. Hildaur Neilsen, Jr. "I have made this letter longer than usual because
nei...@eta.pha.jhu.edu I lack the time to make is shorter."- B. Pascal
Steve Chew
a comedy (rather than a drama). I find it very funny and refreshing --
it deals with a few very "unimportant" characters who never (in the shows
I've seen) save the universe or the world or anything (except their own
lives every once in a while).
Even the premise is funny (and bizzare): The main character, Lister,
is the lowest ranking person on a huge space faring ship. One day he gets
into trouble and is put into cryogenic sleep as punishment. Meanwhile,
his bumbling, rude superior is trying to do Lister's job but manages instead
to cause a nuclear reactor leak which kills everyone on the ship (except for
a cat). Three million years later... :-) ... The computer wakes up
Lister from his sleep since the radiation is finally to safe levels.
Lister awakes to find everyone dead except for the cat which has mutated into
a humanoid (with a cat-like personality). The computer has also created a
hologram companion for Lister. Unfortunately for Lister, it's his old
boss who he hates and is now stuck with. This all happens in the first
episode called "The End". :-)
The shows involve various problems and adventures that Lister and
his companions have while on the ship (during the third season a robot
joins them). None of them amount to much on any kind of cosmic importance
scale, but the character interactions are always very funny and enjoyable.
In fact, the interaction between the characters is what the show concentrates
on and is what makes it good. Don't expect many deep characters though -- it
is supposed to be a comedy and only sometimes delves much deeper.
Red Dwarf shows on many PBS stations across the country (In Baltimore
I see it on channel 22 at 11:00pm on Saturday nights just before Dr. Who).
Check it out if you get a chance and let me know what you think.
Steve
sc...@tis.com
H. Blundell
>I do recall seeing an explicit proof that quantum correlation cannot
>even theoretically be used for FTL communication. What it was or how
>it went is lost somewhere in assorted piles of quantum notes...
I haven't bothered reading anyone's arguments, but I believe that you can't
use the EPR effect for FTL communication. It's true that you both see the same
signals, and that the identity of the signal is propagated instantaneously, but
you can't get communication because you can't control the signal. You both see
the same random pattern of bits, which isn't all that useful.
Harry Blundell
Matt McIrvin
>> Secondly, some subatomic particles may travel faster
>> than light under certain conditions (e.g: gravitons (if they
>> exist) which escape a singularity.)
Those are "virtual gravitons" (if indeed it is profitable to describe
quantized gravity in terms of virtual gravitons, which is not at all
clear since nobody understands quantum gravity, yet). In less exotic
situations other "virtual particles" behave similarly, such as the
virtual photons responsible for the run-of-the mill electrostatic
force. However, in a sense they aren't real particles; unlike the
situation with real particles in which an oscillation of a field
comes in quanta, here nothing is oscillating.
The ontological status of virtual particles is something that
people like to argue about over on sci.physics. It's largely a
matter of taste. Richard Feynman, who more or less originated the
practice of looking at things this way, seems to have treated them
as very real, but if one derives his formalism more rigorously
from quantum field theory they seem less so. However, rest
assured that you can't use them to transmit FTL signals; that
is guaranteed by the axioms of quantum field theory, which is
the theory in which they appear. On B5 it has been stated
explicitly that they use tachyons, which are different, but
it appears to me that the tachyons are behaving a little differently
on B5 than they do in the theories that contain them. No one has ever
observed a tachyon, but they're fun science fiction.
--
Matt 01234567 <-- The original Indent-o-Meter..Someday
McIrvin ^ indentation will be too cheap to meter.
Matt McIrvin
>There isn't any "evidence" for tachyons, but various different attempts
>to figure out how reality works end up with equations whose solutions
>correspond to particles we're familiar with, and another solution that
>predicts that a particle exists that travels faster than light. That
>got dubbed a "tachyon" (from the Greek for "swift", I think). Thus far
>they simply keep showing up in different guises as things that pop out
>of theory...
I should also mention that quantum field theory doesn't seem to
work very well when there are tachyons in it. The universe has a
tendency to be unstable and the vacuum instantly decays into scads
of tachyons, or something similarly disastrous crashes the
formalism of relativistic quantum mechanics.
Sometimes, in fact, the word "tachyon" is used colloquially to
describe a local instability in a quantum field theory, but it
isn't a tachyon in the sense of a particle that travels faster
than light. Perhaps in the 23rd century QFT has been expanded
somewhat.
Somebody
If that's really what happens, there could be some applications for really,
really strong encryption...
Format for 77 columns ok?
--
J
"Gamera's really neat! Gamera's full of meat! We love Gamera!"
"Joel, do human beings really act like this?" -- Tom Servo
Matt McIrvin
>In article <root...@jumpgate.ubc.ca> mmon...@netinfo.ubc.ca writes:
>>"*" on the diagram. By some quantum process (eg. electron-positron
>>collision) it produces two photons with the same polarization and opposite
>>momenta. We collimate the output, to produce beams going left and right.
>>These beams then each go through a polarizer "/". Thus, we have two
>>identical polarized beams radiating away from the midpoint.
>>
>At this point, the correlation goes away. Only the first measurement
>(the first polarizer) will result in any sort of correlation. From then
>on, the two photons act completely independantly of each other, and the
>remainder of the scheme falls apart.
No, the correlation will appear-- I know; I've done the experiment!
Our polarizers were very imperfect, but we did see evidence that (speaking
very colloquially) measuring one photon's polarization forces the
other to have a correlated (actually the *opposite*) polarization.
(I wish I didn't have to take this lab course, but it *is* fun.)
>I do recall seeing an explicit proof that quantum correlation cannot
>even theoretically be used for FTL communication. What it was or how
>it went is lost somewhere in assorted piles of quantum notes...
That's right-- while this correlation does appear experimentally,
it *cannot* be used for communication. What you see is a dearth of
cases in which both photons have the same polarization. But
the polarization of each *individual* photon is completely random,
unless you compare it with the other photon. So in a sense, you
have an FTL communication link that can only be used to "transmit"
completely random noise! In the language of physicists this is
no communication at all.
Jonathan M. Lennox
Somebody <klu...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>hblu...@superior.carleton.ca (H. Blundell) writes:
>
[>> reformatted to fit on-screen]
>>I haven't bothered reading anyone's arguments, but I believe that you
>>can't use the EPR effect for FTL communication. It's true that you
>>both see the same signals, and that the identity of the signal is
>>propagated instantaneously, but you can't get communication because
>>you can't control the signal. You both see the same random pattern of
>>bits, which isn't all that useful.
>
>If that's really what happens, there could be some applications for really,
>really strong encryption...
Yes, the "Quantum one-time pad." There was an article about this
in...hm, Scientific American?...a year or so ago. The really great
thing is that because of quantum observer effects, you just compare
half your bits (the half you don't use for the OTP) with the other
side on an open channel, and you can tell if anyone's trying to tap
your line--because if they are, the bits won't be correlated.
Of course, the OTP-encrypted stuff and the bit comparisons are
transmitted slower than light, so it's not FTL comm. However, it is
an *absolutely* secure channel of comunication unless either the
machines at either end are tapped after they measure the particles, or
current theories of quantum mechanics are very wrong.
There are lots of engineering problems involved in transmitting
EPR-correlated particles more than a few hundred feet, of course, but
there's no theoretical reason to think they can't be.
--
Jonathan Lennox
jona...@columbia.edu
Eric H Neilsen
>No, the correlation will appear-- I know; I've done the experiment!
>Our polarizers were very imperfect, but we did see evidence that (speaking
>very colloquially) measuring one photon's polarization forces the
>other to have a correlated (actually the *opposite*) polarization.
>(I wish I didn't have to take this lab course, but it *is* fun.)
>
of the first photon and the *second* measurement of the second photon? If
so, you've discovered new physics. QM, as currently understood, only provides
for a correlation between the *first* measurement of the first photon and
the *first* measurement of the second.
Say I create two photons
which can either be in state A or B. Before any measurement is made, each
photon exists in superposition of states. If you measure one of them, and
discover it is A, for example, the other one will stop being in a
superposition, and suddenly be in B. If a measurement is made on photon
2, it will be shown to be in B. Now, if something is done to photon 1
to put into some other state, photon 2 will still be in state B. In fact,
according to currently inderstood QM, nothing you do to photon 1 will
alter the fact the photon 2 is in state B. The correlation has gone away.
>
>That's right-- while this correlation does appear experimentally,
>it *cannot* be used for communication.
If what you say is right- that the correlation continues to hold even after
measurements have been made on each photon- then FTP communication is
indeed possible, by exactly the sceme described earlier.
Take the above case, assuming the correlation is kept. If, after it
has been determined by person I that photon 1 is in state A, and
by person II that that photon 2 is in state B, person 1 alters the
state of photon A such that it is something else. If the correlation still
holds, then person 2 can measure photon 2, find that it is no longer in
B, and know instantaneously that something was done to photon 1, hence
you have FTL communication. Now, it may be possible by chance that that
photon 2 is measured to be in B the second time, if person 1 put photon
1 in a superposition such that photon 2 went into a superposition between
B and some other state. It still can be used for FTL- say, instead of using
1 photon, say 1000 photons were use. If the message "nothing" is to be
sent, then person 1 could do nothing, and person 2, when measuring the
second set of photons twice, would find them to be exactly in the same
state each time. If person one wanted to send the message "something",
person 2, when measureing the second set of photons twice, would find that
the results of the second measurement would not be exactly the same as the
first- hence, FTL.
According to traditional QM, though, if say 5 photons were used,
and person 1 measures first, and finds they are ABBAB, then person 2
will see BAABA (if they are anticorrelated), which will still seem completely
random to person 2. No matter what person 1 does to photons of set 1,
person 2 will still see BAABA is the measurement is repeated.
-Hil
>--
>Matt 01234567 <-- The original Indent-o-Meter..Someday
>McIrvin ^ indentation will be too cheap to meter.
IO2...@maine.maine.edu
try again:
I think it's ridiculous to argue over whether B5 or ST is more realistic
because at their heart are two premises you can only specualate about:
interstellar travel and contact with ETs. Neither has happened yet,
so there's no "reality" to refer to. See? You can make the shows
more BELIEVABLE, and you can go inot your ficticious universe's workings
in some detail ... but you really can't say which is realistic in which
is not. On all counts, JMS' vision is as valid as Gene Roddenberry's,
George Lucas' and Steven Speilberg's. And none of them are identical.
"Tongue-tied & twisted just an Earth-bound misfit, I."
-- Pink Floyd, "Learning to Fly"
PLEASURE TALKIN' 2 YA:: MIKE GALLAGHER(**IO21173, UMAINE SYSTEM**)
Michael Zebrowski
>>Here is a little history leason. Do you remember Ptolemy. He proved
>
>the center of the universe, and others accepted his statement on
>faith. He did not in any way, shape, or form PROVE that the Earth
>was the center of the universe.
>
Really, that's funny, I could swear that this thing in front of me
was his proof.
>The same thing with Aristotle; he advanced his version of physics
>without any proof, and it was accepted purely on his say-so.
>
>The Greeks did not have "science" as we understand it today; that is,
>the Greeks simply came up with hypotheses about how the world works
>and argued about them; whoever could convince the most people won. In
>the scientific method, however, one is supposed to *test* hypotheses
>to see whether they actually work, and to communicate his/her ideas to
>others so that they can also test them, and have a chance to come up
>with improvements/alternatives to his/her theory.
>
True, but Aristotle's version did last a LONG time.
>Your point is still correct, of course; the understanding that we now
>have of the universe is not necessarily completely correct. I simply
>wished to correct your first couple of statements.
>--
>Travis S. Casey <ca...@cs.fsu.edu>
>FAQ maintainer for rec.games.design and alt.vampyres (interim)
>No one agrees with me. Not even me.
Mike Z
David Bofinger
<IO2...@MAINE.MAINE.EDU> writes of things believed impossible:
> 1. Faster than light interstellar travel and communication.
I agree that if this is possible the world is a very weird place
indeed. But then one could say the same about quantum mechanics. :-)
> 2. Contact with sentient spacefaring extraterrestials.
The problem with (especially spacefaring) technological
extraterrestrials is of course the Drake paradox. Any culture that
develops an FTL drive today will presumably have colonised its
immediate vicinity within, say, a few thousand years (at most). Even
if they don't _all_ do it some will. Within a million years or so
after the first development of an FTL drive in the galaxy there
shouldn't be room for pre-spaceflight cultures -- like Earth -- to
exist.
Of course in reality everything should go much faster than this but
the times I've quoted are short compared with the lifetime of the
galaxy or of an ecosystem.
A couple of the better-known counterarguments:
1. Space flight is expensive. I don't believe it, with a million years
of practice you would tend to get very efficient at it.
2. There's a "prime directive" or something similar to protect
pre-spaceflight cultures. But then you need to assume that a
culture that enforces this directive has a longevity measured in
(at least) millions of years. Doesn't seem to be the case in B5.
3. We're all there is, or at least first -- clearly not the case in B5.
4. Some horrible accident befell all space-faring cultures a medium-short
time ago. What's more, this accident keeps befalling such cultures
regularly, so that they never get around to stepping on the
primitives. Interesting but a touch of the godlike being to it. Unless
you believe in Vinge singularities.
5. We all happened, by amazing coincidence, to arise simultaneously. Yeah
sure.
JMS: you need an explanation for this. At a minimum you need to
explain why the Centauri didn't occupy Earth while we were still
rowing about in galleys. If you don't know the answer already, start
thinking.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Bofinger AARNet: dxb...@huxley.anu.edu.au
Snail: Dept. of Theoretical Physics, RSPhysSE, ANU, ACT, 2601
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced
by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with
great fevor and emotion--the distinguished but elderly scientists are
then, after all, probably right." -- Isaac Asimov
hen...@ntc01.tele.nokia.fi
Well, lets hope so :-)
James Nicoll + Jasmine
David Bofinger <dxb...@aries.anu.edu.au> wrote:
>
>> 2. Contact with sentient spacefaring extraterrestials.
>
>The problem with (especially spacefaring) technological
>extraterrestrials is of course the Drake paradox. Any culture that
>develops an FTL drive today will presumably have colonised its
>immediate vicinity within, say, a few thousand years (at most). Even
>if they don't _all_ do it some will. Within a million years or so
>after the first development of an FTL drive in the galaxy there
>shouldn't be room for pre-spaceflight cultures -- like Earth -- to
>exist.
snip
>A couple of the better-known counterarguments:
>
>5. We all happened, by amazing coincidence, to arise simultaneously. Yeah
> sure.
>
Remember that JMS has said that Earth has a number of low-tech
client worlds. Maybe we are lucky enough in B5 to be one of the front-runners
in native-technoligical development, unlike the vast majority who get their
tech the hard way, by contact with more technologically advanced species
[Like the Narn may have and Ikarans may have]. From what I've seen, it is
possible that starflight is recent [last 20 millenia, say] and that the
majority of worlds are still pre-agricultural.
James Nicoll
--
"You're so cute when you're pouty." -The Emperor to Vader
Tara Murphy
<snip>
> Have you seen Red Dwarf? It's a British SF series that is mainly
>a comedy (rather than a drama). I find it very funny and refreshing --
>it deals with a few very "unimportant" characters who never (in the shows
>I've seen) save the universe or the world or anything (except their own
>lives every once in a while).
> Even the premise is funny (and bizzare): The main character, Lister,
>is the lowest ranking person on a huge space faring ship. One day he gets
>into trouble and is put into cryogenic sleep as punishment. Meanwhile,
>his bumbling, rude superior is trying to do Lister's job but manages instead
>to cause a nuclear reactor leak which kills everyone on the ship (except for
>a cat). Three million years later... :-) ... The computer wakes up
>Lister from his sleep since the radiation is finally to safe levels.
>Lister awakes to find everyone dead except for the cat which has mutated into
>a humanoid (with a cat-like personality). The computer has also created a
>hologram companion for Lister. Unfortunately for Lister, it's his old
>boss who he hates and is now stuck with. This all happens in the first
>episode called "The End". :-)
>
One minor correction one what is otherwise an accurate synopsis. Cat is
not a mutated form of Lister's original (pregnant) pet. He is the result
of a few million years of evolution; the descendant of the original
feline.
Lister's "boss" is the eternal smeghead, Rimmer. A great show, but it
airs at 3:30 am on the children's network out here. Prime Time means
nothing in _this_ time zone :)
--
Tara Murphy | "I suggest a new strategy Artoo.
ta...@morgan.ucs.mun.ca | Let the Wookiee win."
Matt Austern
> The problem with (especially spacefaring) technological
> extraterrestrials is of course the Drake paradox.
I've always heard it called the Fermi Paradox, but I don't have a
reference for that. And, actually, I think it's a pretty serious
argument. In my opinion, any science fiction that has lots of
spacefaring alien species ought to have some good answer to it.
(Roddenberry didn't. I asked him once.)
> A couple of the better-known counterarguments:
...
> 4. Some horrible accident befell all space-faring cultures a medium-short
> time ago. What's more, this accident keeps befalling such cultures
> regularly, so that they never get around to stepping on the
> primitives. Interesting but a touch of the godlike being to it. Unless
> you believe in Vinge singularities.
Or if you believe in berserkers. I've always thought, myself, that
berserkers are one of the most plausible ways to get around the Fermi
Paradox, if perhaps not one of the most comforting ones. Our RF shell
is now almost 200 light years in diameter...
--
Matthew Austern Never express yourself more clearly
ma...@physics.berkeley.edu than you think. ---N. Bohr
David Adrien Tanguay
>>5. We all happened, by amazing coincidence, to arise simultaneously. Yeah
>> sure.
>>
> Remember that JMS has said that Earth has a number of low-tech
>client worlds. Maybe we are lucky enough in B5 to be one of the front-runners
>in native-technoligical development, unlike the vast majority who get their
>tech the hard way, by contact with more technologically advanced species
>[Like the Narn may have and Ikarans may have]. From what I've seen, it is
>possible that starflight is recent [last 20 millenia, say] and that the
>majority of worlds are still pre-agricultural.
The B5 galaxy seems a violent place. The struggle against other races (a kind
of galactic ecosystem) may discourage much more technological advance.
What happens to a successful race? They build an empire, like the Centauri,
then become complacent and stagnant. Or perhaps they become peaceful and
withdraw from the fray, but strong enough to fend off the others, and
eventually become like G'Kar's buddies. The Vorlons and Minbari are
technologically advanced above the rest, it seems, but they also seem to have
a non-interventionalist attitude, and they don't share their technology.
A bit more advance on their part and there might be no reason for them to
invite us chimps to their dinner parties.
--
David Tanguay d...@Thinkage.on.ca d...@Thinkage.com uunet!thinkage!dat
Thinkage, Ltd. Kitchener, Ontario, Canada [43.40N 80.47W]
Matt McIrvin
> Are you sure you saw a correlation between the *second* measurement
>of the first photon and the *second* measurement of the second photon? If
>so, you've discovered new physics. QM, as currently understood, only provides
>for a correlation between the *first* measurement of the first photon and
>the *first* measurement of the second.
There was only one measurement per photon; the photons scattered off of
copper targets, which (imperfectly) gave some indication of their
polarizations when they were detected by NaI detectors.
Sorry if I misunderstood what was being said here. In principle it
might be possible to do a "quantum nondemolition measurement" in which,
say, the helicity of each photon is measured without destroying the
information about *that* component of the spin (though other components
would be put out of whack), and then any correlation that appeared
would also appear in subsequent measurements. But of course this would
provide no new information at all-- and of course that was not what
we were doing.
>If what you say is right- that the correlation continues to hold even after
>measurements have been made on each photon- then FTP communication is
>indeed possible, by exactly the sceme described earlier.
>Take the above case, assuming the correlation is kept. If, after it
>has been determined by person I that photon 1 is in state A, and
>by person II that that photon 2 is in state B, person 1 alters the
>state of photon A such that it is something else. If the correlation still
>holds, then person 2 can measure photon 2, find that it is no longer in
>B, and know instantaneously that something was done to photon 1, hence
>you have FTL communication.
Ah, *there* the correlation certainly is not preserved. The QND
measurement I mentioned earlier would not do this.
Pirate (Anthony Taylor)
>I think it's ridiculous to argue over whether B5 or ST is more realistic
>because at their heart are two premises you can only specualate about:
>interstellar travel and contact with ETs. Neither has happened yet,
>so there's no "reality" to refer to. See? You can make the shows
>more BELIEVABLE, and you can go inot your ficticious universe's workings
>in some detail ... but you really can't say which is realistic in which
>is not. On all counts, JMS' vision is as valid as Gene Roddenberry's,
>George Lucas' and Steven Speilberg's. And none of them are identical.
2 elements. That's it. Contact with NTIs and FTL travel. There's a lot
more ST takes for granted (like that beaming technology).
The discussion was about _relative_ believability, and in that discussion
there are two primary catagories of reality: interpersonal and physical.
The interpersonal can be broken down into a few subcategories, such as
romance, friendship, antagonism, alien/human, etc. The physical can be
broken down also, into various laws of physics, chemistry, and biology.
Go ahead, break 'em down. Then get a little scorecard out, and grade ST and
B5. Total the score. The one that has the best score is the more
realistic. Of course the score will be weighted; different people will
break both categories up differently, and also they'll score each
subcategory differently. However, I think you'll find this method viable
for judging the relative realism of a show.
I've done it. B5 wins, hands down, in both categories. That doesn't mean
it's the better show, it just means it's more realistic.
- Tony
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I only wish UAF held the same opinions I do.
John Schilling
>In article <94105.155...@maine.maine.edu>
I do not understand why the accident must occur regularly. It could be that
the Universe has been dominated by a single, incredibly advanced civilization
for most of it's history, whic disappeared for some reason only a few hundred
thousand years ago. Assuming such civilization did not have a 'prime
directive' or 'uplift policy', the only times intelligent races would be
likely to evolve would be at the very dawn of the universe, and in the
intervals between the collapse of Galactic/Universal empires and the rise
of new ones. All available evidence is consistent with our evolving in such
an interval, and there is no evidence at all regarding the frequency of such
intervals. Assuming that our existence somehow proves that such intervals
are common is similar to assuming that our existence proves that earth-like
planets are common. Plotting curves from a single data point.
>5. We all happened, by amazing coincidence, to arise simultaneously. Yeah
> sure.
If we did evolve following the collapse of a previous spacefaring
civilization, it is likely that other races in our area of the universe
began evolving at the same time. If they also evolved at about the same
rate, it is not implausible that they would now be at approximatelythe same
level of development. Of course, 'approximately' in this context means
+/- a few thousand years, which still makes the situation in B5 seem
unlikely. But not impossible to explain.
>JMS: you need an explanation for this. At a minimum you need to
>explain why the Centauri didn't occupy Earth while we were still
>rowing about in galleys. If you don't know the answer already, start
>thinking.
--
*John Schilling * "You can have Peace, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * or you can have Freedom. *
*University of Southern California * Don't ever count on having both *
*Aerospace Engineering Department * at the same time." *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * - Robert A. Heinlein *
*(213)-740-5311 or 747-2527 * Finger for PGP public key *
Doug Quinn
Quinn (doug....@his.com) on 4/20/94;
MM> Actually, the photons have opposite polarizations. If one is
MM> polarized vertically then the other will be detected as polarized
MM> horizontally.
Oh? The photons have an anti-correlation? Is this true of all three axis of
the photon (assuming two seperate labs measuring the same emission), or only if
both labs measure the same axis? This is confusing -- am I to understand that
the correlations in the measurements are not dependent on whether lab a is
measuring the same emission as lab b, but that when you compare the two sets of
data they are 100% anti-correlated? This only makes sense to me if there is
some kind of signal effecting both photons... is this wrong?
"Comment is free, but facts are sacred." (C.P. Scott)
============================================================================
Douglas Tyrone Quinn, CSP
St. Paul's College, Washington DC
xeno...@his.com
strac...@genie.geis.com
we a) were of very little use, b) had little to offer, and c) came at a
time when the Centauri were starting to fall back into isolationism just
a bit. The Narn had the misfortune to be strategically well located, had
many resources the Centauri wanted, and provided other advantages. One
doesn't just conquer worlds helter-skelter; it takes time, money, effort
and some blood to conquer worlds. You only choose those which offer you
enough to make the process worthwhile. That simple.
jms
Scott Norton
: Remember that JMS has said that Earth has a number of low-tech
: client worlds. Maybe we are lucky enough in B5 to be one of the
: front-runners in native-technoligical development,
: unlike the vast majority who get their
: tech the hard way, by contact with more technologically advanced species
: [Like the Narn may have and Ikarans may have]. From what I've seen, it is
: possible that starflight is recent [last 20 millenia, say] and that the
: majority of worlds are still pre-agricultural.
: James Nicoll
My impression is that we developed starflight by ourselves, but
that we met the Centauri very soon thereafter, and that they bootstrapped
us by providing a great deal of our technology. My guess is that they
thought we would be a viable buffer against the Minbari if we were
sufficiently provided with technological means, and probably fed us quite
a bit during the E-M War(assuimng that the theory that that war lasted
several years is correct). We might also have gotten some advancement
from trading tech with the members of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds a
bit before our war with the Minbari.
Scott Norton sno...@netcom.com
David Bofinger
> While we were in an agrarian state, and an early industrial state, we
> a) were of very little use, b) had little to offer, and c) came at a
> time when the Centauri were starting to fall back into isolationism
> just a bit.
OK, but how about a thousand years before that, or whenever it was the
Centauri were an agressive, conquering and colonising power? Maybe
humans wouldn't have had any valuable industry at the time but doesn't
a habitable, Earthlike world have some value of its own? Well maybe
not, guess it depends how common they are.
I'm not so much thinking of
"Now we shall force these humans to our will, phaser their warriors,
artificially inseminate their women with Elvis clones and make off
with their ... whatever those herdbeasts making the mooing sound are"
as
"OK, we'll establish the initial colony on that island -- what!
Intelligent natives!? Do they have nuclear weapons? Oh, bronze age,
well that's all right then. Now, as I was saying, we'll put the main
square here beside the tennis court..."
> One doesn't just conquer worlds helter-skelter; it takes time, money,
> effort and some blood to conquer worlds.
I can't imagine a Centauri occupation of the Earth of 1650 BC, say :-)
would have been much like conquest, more like colonisation. Roughly
the same time, perhaps slightly less money and effort than an empty
world (coerced labour if you need it), no significant amount of blood.
Hell, I guess we can suspend disbelief if we have to. But it would be
nice if there were an explanation, particularly if it came out later
and turned out to be important to something else.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Bofinger AARNet: dxb...@huxley.anu.edu.au
Snail: Dept. of Theoretical Physics, RSPhysSE, ANU, ACT, 2601
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"We stare at [the extraterrestrials] through the fence, and they stare at us,
and the only question is: who's throwing the peanuts?" -`Sundiver', David Brin
Paul H. Pimentel
uer Earth. Heck, out of every race on the show we look the most like them. It
translates to international relations here on earth also. Did you see Western
Europe going off and enslaving each other? No. They were all lily white. Ins
tead, they all staked a claim to parts of what are now the Third World--Africa,
India, the mideast to a lesser extent. Of course, there were wars between the
European nations but a lot of it derived out of the quest for resources and a
lot of jostling on the world stage.
Paul
David Bofinger
>> FTL is theorized in at least two cases that I know of.
Not really. Deciding whether FTL is possible under general relativity
(nobody's sure) is an active field of study, but that's all.
>> Muons,
Muons are like electrons with extra mass, not very weird.
>> which have never been observed except as missing mass in an unbalanced
>> reaction
Nope, now I think you're talking about neutrinos. Neutrinos have been
observed recently but for a long time they only showed up as missing
energy and momentum from decays.
>> are suggested to be travelling backwards in time.
This doesn't apply to neutrinos or muons. I think here you're thinking
of antiparticles. Thinking of an antiparticle as the absence of a
negative energy particle (i.e. minus one negative energy particles
makes one positive energy particle with opposite quantum numbers) is
an old idea, and negative energy loosely means travelling backwards in
time. And travelling in time is equivalent to FTL, which is the best
argument against it.
>> Secondly, some subatomic particles may travel faster than light under
>> certain conditions (e.g: gravitons (if they exist) which escape a
>> singularity.)
I'm not sure what you're thinking of here: Hawking radiation?
Now back to Babylon-5:
<IO2...@MAINE.MAINE.EDU> writes:
> I think it's ridiculous to argue over whether B5 or ST is more
> realistic because at their heart are two premises you can only
> specualate about: interstellar travel and contact with ETs. Neither
> has happened yet, so there's no "reality" to refer to.
There hasn't been a Sydney Olympics yet either, but one could easily
enough make a "realistic" story set there. From context I think you're
trying to say that as soon as you violate physical law as we presently
understand it realism goes out the window.
There's something in that, but I think it's still possible to make a
distinction between the styles of ST:TNG and B5. It's a bit like
Occam's razor. Star Trek makes no serious effort to have anything
realistic. Babylon-5, on the other hand, doesn't put an unrealistic
feature in unless there's a dramatic reason for it, it's tried to make
things as realistic as practical. Or consider space combat in B5 and
in Star Wars. The criteria used to decide how spacecraft should behave
in flight are very different in the two cases, and I would argue B5's,
because they involve real physics, are the more realistic.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Bofinger AARNet: dxb...@huxley.anu.edu.au
Snail: Dept. of Theoretical Physics, RSPhysSE, ANU, ACT, 2601
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Fishing baskets are employed to catch fish; but when the fish are got
men forget the baskets; snares are employed to catch hares, but when
the hares are got, men forget the snares. Words are employed to convey
ideas, but when the ideas are grasped, men forget the words." -- Chuang Tzu
Mark Hughes
> 1. Faster than light interstellar travel and communication.
>NEITHER HAS HAPPENED YET (depending on your feelings towards alien
>abductees.) Furthermore, the scientific community seems to delight
>in proclaiming both 1 & 2 IMPOSSIBLE. #1 is written off by relativity,
>and though no one has directly challeneged #2, I keep reading statements
>that "we have no evidence of planets orbiting other stars in the galaxy."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is incorrect, by the way. At least one jovian-type planet orbits
Barnard's Star (found by both orbital perturbations and occulation, as I recall
- there was a good article in [I think] Scientific American a few years ago).
And given any reasonable theory of stellar development, planets are pretty
much guaranteed for most mid-size single stars. Life, on the other hand, is
open to dispute... But given the size of the universe, and the amount of time
available, I'd have a really hard time believing life only formed once...
-Mark Hughes
"And #1 may be written off by relativity, but the universe runs on quantum
theory, not relativity, and QPists have a different opinion. But hey, do I
look like a physicist?"
Kay-Yut Chen
>There's something in that, but I think it's still possible to make a
>distinction between the styles of ST:TNG and B5. It's a bit like
>Occam's razor. Star Trek makes no serious effort to have anything
>realistic. Babylon-5, on the other hand, doesn't put an unrealistic
>feature in unless there's a dramatic reason for it, it's tried to make
>things as realistic as practical. Or consider space combat in B5 and
>in Star Wars. The criteria used to decide how spacecraft should behave
>in flight are very different in the two cases, and I would argue B5's,
>because they involve real physics, are the more realistic.
Actually science/technology is not the only way of seeing whether things are
realistic. For example, the economics system in TNG is modeled extremely
unrealisticly.
1) In the first season, they mentioned there is no more money in the 24th
century. Now r they want us to believe that as long as there is no hunger and
poverty, there is no need for a medium of exchange?
Kay-Yut Chen
>>There's something in that, but I think it's still possible to make a
>>distinction between the styles of ST:TNG and B5. It's a bit like
>>Occam's razor. Star Trek makes no serious effort to have anything
>>realistic. Babylon-5, on the other hand, doesn't put an unrealistic
>>feature in unless there's a dramatic reason for it, it's tried to make
>>things as realistic as practical. Or consider space combat in B5 and
>>in Star Wars. The criteria used to decide how spacecraft should behave
>>in flight are very different in the two cases, and I would argue B5's,
>>because they involve real physics, are the more realistic.
Sorry, screwed up last post. Anyway, here is the whole thing.
Actually science/technology is not the only way of seeing whether things are
realistic. For example, the economics system in TNG is modeled extremely
unrealisticly.
1) In the first season, they mentioned there is no more money in the 24th
century. Now r they want us to believe that as long as there is no hunger and
poverty, there is no need for a medium of exchange and no property rights? So
what do i do if i want a starship? Walk to Utopia Shipyard and board the first
ship they rolled out?
2) They realized their mistake and now they do have a medium of exchange
(although they refuse to call it money). It is even harder to believe while we
have a convenient exchanging system now (paper money, electronic transaction
...), they are carrying bars of METAL in the 24th century as the medium of
exchange. BTW, we did that in ancient China. I cringed everytime i heard the
phrase "gold plated-latinum".
Mark Hughes
: I haven't bothered reading anyone's arguments, but I believe that you can't
: use the EPR effect for FTL communication. It's true that you both see the same
: signals, and that the identity of the signal is propagated instantaneously, but
: you can't get communication because you can't control the signal. You both see
: the same random pattern of bits, which isn't all that useful.
Quick idea here, couldn't you just turn the pulse on and off like a telegraph
sending morse code? Then it wouldn't matter what polarization you receive...
the fact that you GOT a pulse is your bit, not what flavor it is.
I'm assuming that it travels at a fixed speed (otherwise it's all meaningless
gibberish anyway... [but it'd be a great way to transmit the News - it sure
couldn't strip any more meaning from it...]).
-Mark Hughes
"1101010101110101110100010101010101111" -find the smiley face in this binary
code and win a free straightjacket!
Timothy J Burke
: I think there might have been racial reasons as to why the Centauri didn't conq
And for our third-place contestants on Jeopardy, we have a lifetime
supply of Turtle Wax!
Sorry, this theory won't wash. The full flower of European racial
ideology as a justification and motive for imperialism came -after- the
initial growth of European colonialism and the slave trade; much of the
original impetus for establishing the Atlantic system that later powered
the expansion of the West lay in competition between Renaissance states
and in the establishment of early plantations in Mediterranean and later,
in Madiera and other Atlantic islands. So if the Centauri were an
expanding imperial regime, and they knew of Earth, they wouldn't have
stayed away for "racial" reasons, or at least not if we regard their
empire as analogous to those in human history.
Do we know anything about the climate and terrain that most Centauri
prefer? Or anything about their sun, or other material conditions that
Earth might have and the Centauri world might not have that would have
possibly influenced them to ignore Earth?
James Nicoll + Jasmine
Paul H. Pimentel <PP3...@auvm.american.edu> wrote:
>I think there might have been racial reasons as to why the Centauri didn't
>you see Western Europe going off and enslaving each other? No. They were
>all lily white.
Gosh, that puts a whole new complexion on the term 'Black Irish'.
If it will make you feel better, some Europeans were indeed invaded and
exploited by other Europeans.
>Instead, they all staked a claim to parts of what are now the Third
>World--Africa, India, the mideast to a lesser extent. Of course, there
>were wars between the European nations but a lot of it derived out of
>the quest for resources and a lot of jostling on the world stage.
I'm a bit curious: what was colonialism about, if not the quest
for resources?
James Nicoll
> Paul
Mike Montour
> On Tue, 19 Apr 1994 21:02:24 GMT, H. Blundell (hblu...@superior.carleton.ca) is alleged to have written:
> : I haven't bothered reading anyone's arguments, but I believe that you can't
> : use the EPR effect for FTL communication. It's true that you both see the same
> : signals, and that the identity of the signal is propagated instantaneously, but
> : you can't get communication because you can't control the signal. You both see
> : the same random pattern of bits, which isn't all that useful.
> Quick idea here, couldn't you just turn the pulse on and off like a telegraph
> sending morse code? Then it wouldn't matter what polarization you receive...
> the fact that you GOT a pulse is your bit, not what flavor it is.
In the scenario I originally mentioned (which is probably wrong), the
photon source was midway between the source and the receiver. The light
itself moves at c in both directions - the FTL communication comes when one
person does something at position -L that has an instant effect at +L. It
would be a digital type of communication anyway, since you would have to
average many photons to determine a "bit" of signal.
Switching the "source" pulse on and off would be useless, since the
sender has no control over the photon source.
Gharlane of Eddore
(James Nicoll + Jasmine) writes:
>
> for resources?
>
Mostly, it was a convenient way to send off all the younger sons who were
generating tension over the succession of the estate title, a convenient
way for senior officers to arrange for the absence of younger officers
who were paying a bit too much attention to other people's wives, and a
convenient way to post officers with drug and liquor problems to places
where their excesses would not unduly affect H.M.'s citizens.
Press gangs and transportee brigades also provided a salutary means for
reducing the population density in the more unsavory parts of major
port cities, and a convenient way to reduce the number of Irish malcontents.
I suspect finding the Seven Cities Of Gold was much less important than
having a politically acceptable place to ship people who were rocking
the boat...
--
=======================================================================
|| "It's Science Fiction, if, presuming technical competence on the ||
|| the part of the writer, he genuinely believes it could happen." ||
|| --- John W. Campbell, Jr. ||
Benjamin B. Thomas
In article <dxb105.767160695@huxley> dxb...@huxley.anu.edu.au (David Bofinger) writes:
David> strac...@genie.geis.com writes:
>> While we were in an agrarian state, and an early industrial
>> state, we a) were of very little use, b) had little to offer, and
>> c) came at a time when the Centauri were starting to fall back
>> into isolationism just a bit.
David> OK, but how about a thousand years before that, or whenever
David> it was the Centauri were an agressive, conquering and
David> colonising power? Maybe humans wouldn't have had any valuable
David> industry at the time but doesn't a habitable, Earthlike world
David> have some value of its own? Well maybe not, guess it depends
David> how common they are.
[snip]
David> "OK, we'll establish the initial colony on that island --
David> what! Intelligent natives!? Do they have nuclear weapons?
David> Oh, bronze age, well that's all right then.
[snip]
David> I can't imagine a Centauri occupation of the Earth of 1650
David> BC, say :-) would have been much like conquest, more like
David> colonisation.
Yes, David. The Centauri did indeed start a colony on the Earth far back
into the past. I even bet you've heard of it - you know, the one out in
the middle of the Atlantic. Too bad it sunk into the sea.
/>
// Benjy Thomas be...@ai.mit.edu
(//////[O]>=========================================-
\\ (617) 225-7225 Baker House 225
\> "Off to see Ironheart"
David Bofinger
> the economics system in TNG is modeled extremely unrealisticly. [...]
> they are carrying bars of METAL in the 24th century as the medium of
> exchange.
I agree this does seem weird. My interpretation was this: usually, the
dominant power in a quadrant acts as a de facto reserve bank, if the
Klingon empire dominates an area of space then trade will be conducted
in Klingon spogbots or whatever they use. The communist-utopian
Federation, however, doesn't _have_ an internal currency. So traders
in its quadrant are forced to fall back on absurdly inconvenient
standards like the bar of gold-pressed latinum. There isn't any other
standard because nobody in the area is trusted enough and big enough
to maintain forex currency.
I'm redirecting followups out of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5, for obvious
reasons. If there are there other interpretations I'd be interested if
you mailed them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Bofinger AARNet: dxb...@huxley.anu.edu.au
Snail: Dept. of Theoretical Physics, RSPhysSE, ANU, ACT, 2601
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It is the logic of our times
No subject for immortal verse
That we, who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse." -- C.D. Lewis
Timothy Huber
WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? ACK!! Let's see... the Roman Empire took
over the rest of western eyrope in addition to other conquests, the Holy
Roman Empire wanted to bend Italy to its rule, the Anglo-Saxons conquered
Roman Britain, the Franks took Gaul, England took Ireland, and Spain
conquered the Netherlands. There are other examples, but the european
states only really stopped conquering each other (or at least trying to)
when they found other lands. "Racism" as we know it is a reletively
recent concept; religion "infidels, heretics" and state "those Englishmen
are so strange that they have tails! (medieval stereotype)" Please...do
not talk about history unless you actually have something with which to
back it up.
-Timothy Huber
"."-Angelo Muscat
John Benn
>Do we know anything about the climate and terrain that most Centauri
>prefer? Or anything about their sun, or other material conditions that
>Earth might have and the Centauri world might not have that would have
>possibly influenced them to ignore Earth?
You are all ignoring the obvious. The Centauri tried to convince
us that we were a long lost Centauri colony. If we believed them we
would join the Centauri Republic without the need of invasion. Why
invade Earth when you can take what you want in another way.
al bell
standards. If anything were valuable in the 24th century, you'd
think it woul be dilithium crystals or antimatter.
Marco Bernardo
: In article <fletcherC...@netcom.com>, flet...@netcom.com (F. Sullivan
: Segal) says:
: >
: >In article <1994Apr16....@sol.uvic.ca>,
: >Sir Robyn Blaber <rbl...@sol.UVic.CA> wrote:
: >>In article <94105.155...@MAINE.MAINE.EDU> <IO2...@MAINE.MAINE.EDU>
: >writes:
: >>> 1. Faster than light interstellar travel and communication.
: >>> 2. Contact with sentient spacefaring extraterrestials.
: >>>Furthermore, the scientific community seems to delight in proclaiming
: >>>both 1 & 2 IMPOSSIBLE.
I cannot help but wonder what perspectives exist in reality(??) that
humanity's scienctists are just not able to observe and measure at this
time???
What would of happened if evolution had never exposed humanity to the
perspective that flight was possible? Would we ever have stumbled onto the
possiblity of flight via some form of technology? Even if we did, would we
believe that flight was possible naturally.
Perhaps the only way for humanity to lose its self-centered bias towards
the universe/reality is for it to be exposed to and culture shocked by
a far advanced alien species.
: >>>So, on both scores, ST:TOS/TNG/DS9/VOYAGER and B5 aren't just unrealistic
: >>>they're total bullshit.
We're not really in a position to truly say that just yet...
Marco Bernardo
David Bofinger
> [...] the european states only really stopped conquering each other
> (or at least trying to) when they found other lands.
And when they'd filled all those up they had two world wars.
To get the conversation back to matters related to the Drake paradox:
how long is recorded galactic history? I guess I mean as far as the EA
knows. And is there any (archaeological or other) evidence that would
allow us to date any civilisations as older than this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Bofinger AARNet: dxb...@huxley.anu.edu.au
Snail: Dept. of Theoretical Physics, RSPhysSE, ANU, ACT, 2601
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"To our friends, the good guys. And to our enemies, the bad guys. And to the
hope that someday we will be able to tell the difference." - Keith Laumer
Matt McIrvin
[about instantaneous EPR communication, and why it doesn't work]...
> Quick idea here, couldn't you just turn the pulse on and off like a telegraph
>sending morse code? Then it wouldn't matter what polarization you receive...
>the fact that you GOT a pulse is your bit, not what flavor it is.
No... the extent to which you have control over what the other person
sees is that you can vary which variable you measure at your end... and
if you measure the same variable the other person does then the random
results over there are correlated with what you see, whereas if you
measure an incompatible variable there is no correlation. But in
either case the other person sees nothing but noise; and if you make
no measurement at all the other person sees nothing but noise. The
differences between the situations only become clear when you compare
notes, which of course requires some other form of communication.
If I may use a slightly cheesy metaphor, this is like the older
variety of random-dot stereogram where there are two separate
images for your eyes to fuse; if you have only one of them, there's
nothing there but a bunch of dots.
Timothy J Burke
: You are all ignoring the obvious. The Centauri tried to convince
: us that we were a long lost Centauri colony. If we believed them we
: would join the Centauri Republic without the need of invasion. Why
: invade Earth when you can take what you want in another way.
No, we are not ignoring the obvious. The question on the table is, why
didn't the Centauri conquer Earth a long time ago, when they were at the
height of their power, if we are their stellar neighbors? Why wasn't
Earth a desirable piece of real estate?
The Centauri didn't try to convince us that we were a long-lost colony
until after we were already out in space, past the point at which the
Centauri Republic was expanding. At that point, they didn't have any
interest in adding -anybody- to their empire.
John Benn
>John Benn (be...@server.uwindsor.ca) wrote:
>
>: You are all ignoring the obvious. The Centauri tried to convince
>: us that we were a long lost Centauri colony. If we believed them we
>: would join the Centauri Republic without the need of invasion. Why
>: invade Earth when you can take what you want in another way.
>
>No, we are not ignoring the obvious. The question on the table is, why
>didn't the Centauri conquer Earth a long time ago, when they were at the
>height of their power, if we are their stellar neighbors? Why wasn't
>Earth a desirable piece of real estate?
Too hard. We had developed some measure of technology. 1
billion humans walking around with guns is still going to be a tough
planet to conquer. There were probably other worlds nearby that
offered easy exploitation. The Narn were probably primitive when
conquered or maybe around Earth 1000 A.D. tech level or something. We
don't know enough about the B5 universe to acurately estimate whether
the Centauri thing is an inconsistency or not. Trust JMS. It kills
me when everyone speculates on the nature of things in the B5 universe
when anything could go. The Vorlon thing is particularly irritating
because know next to nothing about them. I realize everyone's just
having fun trying to predict or rationalize things, but somethimes it
gets on my nerves.
P.S.: I know I'm guilty of it too.
James Nicoll + Jasmine
John Benn <be...@server.uwindsor.ca> wrote:
>In article <2pnc6h$j...@emoryu1.cc.emory.edu> tbu...@cc.emory.edu (Timothy J Burke) writes:
>>
>>No, we are not ignoring the obvious. The question on the table is, why
>>didn't the Centauri conquer Earth a long time ago, when they were at the
>>height of their power, if we are their stellar neighbors? Why wasn't
>>Earth a desirable piece of real estate?
>
> Too hard. We had developed some measure of technology. 1
>billion humans walking around with guns is still going to be a tough
>planet to conquer. There were probably other worlds nearby that
>offered easy exploitation. The Narn were probably primitive when
>conquered or maybe around Earth 1000 A.D. tech level or something.
The Narn had more than one world when conquered: Ragesh was
a former Narn world. It seems unlikely they spread to other worlds
using technology similar to Earth's in AD 1000.
If you don't want to devote massive resources to taking a
world, you can do the old 'divide and conquer': show up in Europe
circa AD 1200 and offer help against the Islamic hordes [Or vice
versa]. Let the local do the dying for you.
Hmmm. Maybe 'Prester John' was a wiley Centauri whose funding
got pulled at the last minute...
Anther possibility is to spread a lethal disease. It is
unlikely that human disease can affect Centauris.
James Nicoll
Arnold Chu
: In article <94105.155...@maine.maine.edu> <IO2...@MAINE.MAINE.EDU> writes:
: > 1. Faster than light interstellar travel and communication.
: > 2. Contact with sentient spacefaring extraterrestials.
: >It's impossible to realistically portray either of these because
: >NEITHER HAS HAPPENED YET (depending on your feelings towards alien
: >abductees.) Furthermore, the scientific community seems to delight
: >in proclaiming both 1 & 2 IMPOSSIBLE. #1 is written off by relativity,
: >and though no one has directly challeneged #2, I keep reading statements
: >that "we have no evidence of planets orbiting other stars in the galaxy."
: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: This is incorrect, by the way. At least one jovian-type planet orbits
: Barnard's Star (found by both orbital perturbations and occulation, as I recall
: - there was a good article in [I think] Scientific American a few years ago).
: And given any reasonable theory of stellar development, planets are pretty
: much guaranteed for most mid-size single stars. Life, on the other hand, is
: open to dispute... But given the size of the universe, and the amount of time
: available, I'd have a really hard time believing life only formed once...
The NY Times just had an article on this a few weeks ago. There's a planet
confirmed around some pulsar after some 2+ years of data analysis. Since
a pulsar is late alone the evolution of a star, it is very likely that younger
stars would have planets also.
Regards,
A. Chu
James Nicoll + Jasmine
>
>The NY Times just had an article on this a few weeks ago. There's a planet
>confirmed around some pulsar after some 2+ years of data analysis. Since
>a pulsar is late alone the evolution of a star, it is very likely that younger
>stars would have planets also.
>
planets around the pulsar in question, and that because they are are so
close to the pulsar [Inside the volume of a red giant stage star], they
proabably could not have survived either the phases of stellar evolution
leading up to the supernova which formed the pulsar, nor the supernova
itself. That may mean that they formed in the brief period since the star
blew up.
Andrew J. Cortez
RE: orbiting planets.
Actually an article on the AP wire earlier this week noted the
discovery of _3_ planets around a single star in a system 17,000 light
years away. This I thought was big news, but I haven't heard much
else on this story.
--
Andrew J. Cortez | "He was wrong.
| There are TWO born every minute"
ajco...@freenet.tlh.fl.us| [W. Disney]
BGS...@Prodigy.com |
Christian Brandt
|> This is incorrect, by the way. At least one jovian-type planet orbits
|> Barnard's Star (found by both orbital perturbations and occulation, as I recall
And some days ago a nice articel about pulsar-planets was posted in a local
BBS-Echo. It was mentioned that at least two above earthsize-planets should be
located around the mentioned pulsar.
|> And given any reasonable theory of stellar development, planets are pretty
|> much guaranteed for most mid-size single stars. Life, on the other hand, is
In fact a star needs planets to cope with its rotationpower (is this word right?
My native-language calls it "Fliehkraft"). Our solarsystem has 99% of its
rotationpower in the planets and only 1% withhin the sun. If the planets would
fall into the sun, the sun would start rotation much faster, even resulting in
exploding or at least destabilisation. So planets are at least very resonable for
a mediumsize star.
Christian Brandt
bra...@informatik.tu-muenchen.de 2:2480/303...@fido.org
bra...@nf.muc.de 91:5150/8...@max.ftn
Worf: "F*ck the prime directive - lets nuke some aliens!"
Riker: "Nuke the prime directive - lets f*ck some aliens!"
Michael Seaton
> In fact a star needs planets to cope with its rotationpower (is this word
>right?
>My native-language calls it "Fliehkraft"). Our solarsystem has 99% of its
>rotationpower in the planets and only 1% withhin the sun. If the planets would
I believe the translation is 'angular momentum'.
Michael Seaton
p.s. in constructing scientific terms, English usually keeps words separated,
e.g. 'solar system'.
Mark O. Wilson
I'd gotten the impression that dilitium crystals were almost always in
short supply. Those that exist have been put to use.
The last thing I can think that any government would want is millions of
pieces of AM floating around.
Can you imagine the problems if even just one containment field a year failed.
--
Mob rule isn't any prettier merely because the mob calls itself a government
It ain't charity if you are using someone else's money.
Wilson's theory of relativity: If you go back far enough, we're all related.
Mark....@AtlantaGA.NCR.com
Mark O. Wilson
| In fact a star needs planets to cope with its rotationpower (is this word right?
|My native-language calls it "Fliehkraft"). Our solarsystem has 99% of its
I believe angular momentum is the phrase you are looking for.
|rotationpower in the planets and only 1% withhin the sun. If the planets would
|fall into the sun, the sun would start rotation much faster, even resulting in
|exploding or at least destabilisation. So planets are at least very resonable for
|a mediumsize star.
I think we all believe that a solar system forms out of condensing cloud of
gas.
If no planets were formed, the remaining gas would not coalesce into the
star, but would instead continue to orbit at it's current distance.
When the sun ignited, it would then sweep most of the gas out of the system.
I know of no reason to assume that a system must form planets. But from
what I know of the mechanics involved, I find it very likely that planets
would form.
BTW, even in a system with planets, the majority of the angular momentum
would still be contained in the gas that forms neither the sun nor the planets.
--
Mob rule isn't any prettier merely because the mob calls itself a government
It ain't charity if you are using someone else's money.
Wilson's theory of relativity: If you go back far enough, we're all related.
Matt McIrvin
>IO2...@MAINE.MAINE.EDU wrote:
>: >>In article <94105.155...@MAINE.MAINE.EDU> <IO2...@MAINE.MAINE.EDU>
>: >writes:
>: >>> 1. Faster than light interstellar travel and communication.
>: >>> 2. Contact with sentient spacefaring extraterrestials.
>: >>>
>: >>>Furthermore, the scientific community seems to delight in proclaiming
>: >>>both 1 & 2 IMPOSSIBLE.
>I cannot help but wonder what perspectives exist in reality(??) that
>humanity's scienctists are just not able to observe and measure at this
>time???
I don't recall *any* scientific consensus, actually, that contact with
sentient spacefaring extraterrestrials is IMPOSSIBLE. Various
scientists have certainly said such things, but contact via radio
signals is the sort of thing that scientists actually work on, and
physical contact might occur even if the speed of light is an
absolute limit. The aliens might be very long-lived, capable of
extremely relativistic travel, capable of hibernating somehow,
willing to live in generation arks, etc. Scientists have taken
these sorts of ideas seriously at times; there's certainly no
absolute physical prohibition against them.
The poster may have been thinking of the mainstream scientific
consensus that aliens are not *now* making physical contact with
us. Though the media seldom seem to realize it, there is a big
difference between stating that UFO's are not abducting people
and claiming that "we are alone in the universe" or that contact
is impossible.
As for faster-than-light travel, known physics in the realm in
which we can do experiments seems not to allow it; whether general
relativity allows it is a matter of current controversy; and many
speculative extensions to known physics involve it somehow. Most
physicists would probably *bet* that it will never happen, but
that's basically what it would be, an informed bet. When careful
physicists say things are impossible they will often qualify the
statement by stating the theoretical framework in which they are
impossible; even when they don't do so, such a qualifier should
probably be inferred.
--
Matt 01234567 <-- Indent-o-Meter
McIrvin ^ Tab damage will make the deserts bloom!