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Bill Nye's Answer to the Fermi Paradox

newtboy says...

Well, first you must determine the average lifespan of a species...impossible until we survey the entire universe.
Then you must determine the average distance between populated planets.
Then you must determine the 'lifespan' of all possible transmission technologies (on average). (how long 'they' emit that kind of transmission)
Then you must determine the maximum range and speed of any transmissions, and what form those transmissions are in, which is what most of this video is about. Now we're looking in 2 small ranges of possible wave form communications for the first time. Subtract any with a maximum range lower than the distance from transmission to us (another unknowable).
Then you must determine how many ranges of not just wave form energy are we ignoring, but how many other forms of communication/emission/energy might there be that we aren't looking for or even conceiving their existence (another impossible question to answer)?
Only once ALL those (impossible) questions are answered (and I'm certain more that are unknown but important variables) can you do even preliminary calculations to determine how statistically likely it should really be to 'find' evidence of extra-planetary species/civilizations, and that number is almost definitely tiny by any standard.

To think they might be 'here' already, you must either assume they are a space fairing species (which would also indicate a species that 'raids' planets and moves on, not one that settles and/or trades, so lets hope not) or you must assume they have much faster than light travel, which if true, should mean one would expect to see aliens 'teleporting' everywhere, and likely some crazy looking evidence of the transportation method. If neither of these are true (space fairing or faster than light travel) you would not expect to ever hear or see them.
Since technology evolves, so do the types of transmissions that technology produces. To think that in the time frame a single type of transmission is used somewhere in the universe (+ travel time) we'll be searching for exactly that type of transmission form would be such an INSANELY unlikely coincidence that many would see it as proof of god (because it couldn't statistically happen naturally, like a babble fish).
What this means is, unless we become space fairing raiders ourselves, or find faster than light travel ourselves, we'll likely be alone forever, even if there is other intelligent life out there.
There's just too much to search in too many ways over too long a time span, like looking for a single protozoa in the entire ocean, when you don't know what it looks like or even what a protozoa is, and the protozoa only exists for one random week in your life time.
That's where I think they are....unfindable.

robdot said:

He is understanding it, the paradox is, the earth is billions of years old,Our modern society is only a few hundred years old, but there should be civilizations out there who are millions of years old,its not that we should be "hearing' them ,but that they should be here..like flying around..they should have populated the galaxy by now..There should be many, many civilizations which are millions of years old..and they should be readily identifiable by the many signals filling our galazy....where the fuck are they?

HBOs 'Questioning Darwin' - Creationists Talk Creationism

ChaosEngine says...

Ironically, this video presents the best evidence I've ever seen against evolution. Honestly, I've met smarter protozoa than these "people".

And the guy at 2:00 is 100% right, he just doesn't realise it

Creationist Senator Can E. Coli Turn Into a Person?

Babymech says...

The other key issue that makes it really hard for religious people to 'get' evolution on a core level is their understanding of evolution as teleological - goal-directed - and their understanding of humanity as the 'end goal' of evolution. Even if they get the geological scales involved and they get the basic genetic mechanism of evolution, they still see it as a process intended to create humans; as us being the 'best' life forms. That fucks their ability to actually understand evolution all to shit, because they can't get their minds around the randomness of it, and the fact that protozoa that haven't changed much for the last several hundred million years are clearly earth's evolutionary 'winners.' Sometime I think it would be easier for these fundamentalists to deny the existence of God than to accept that the existence, shape and role of humanity on earth is just a meaningless accident.

Micro Empire

rich_magnet says...

Not to pick nits, but there wasn't much of a "subcellular epic" in this video. Microscopic, yes, but almost everything was multicellular, except for a few protozoa at the end.

Still, beautiful and nicely set to the tunez.

srd (Member Profile)

peggedbea says...

your description of the pink goop gave me images of dr. who rushing to save some amorphous alien race with intents that are both benign and malicious, but wholly misunderstood.


In reply to this comment by srd:
I'm very suspicious of pink goop. It may become alive and sentient in your body. Or creep out of the stomach right into your arteries where it will breed.

I keep having this mental image of Calvin (of Hobbes) at lunch in school telling Susy that it's Protozoa Spread with extra Amoeba Juice...

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
i think it's marshmallow cream. possible aerated marshmallow cream. but it's certainly something i don't think you should expose your bowels too.

In reply to this comment by srd:
Well, I've seen the fluff, and to be honest, I still couldn't tell you what it is. Except seriously, deeply disturbing.

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
it ended in small children crying and teenage girl having an exasperate piss attack because I DIDN'T FUCKING KNOW WHAT THE HELL FLUFF WAS and a 4 year old can't explain it.

peggedbea (Member Profile)

srd says...

I'm very suspicious of pink goop. It may become alive and sentient in your body. Or creep out of the stomach right into your arteries where it will breed.

I keep having this mental image of Calvin (of Hobbes) at lunch in school telling Susy that it's Protozoa Spread with extra Amoeba Juice...

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
i think it's marshmallow cream. possible aerated marshmallow cream. but it's certainly something i don't think you should expose your bowels too.

In reply to this comment by srd:
Well, I've seen the fluff, and to be honest, I still couldn't tell you what it is. Except seriously, deeply disturbing.

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
it ended in small children crying and teenage girl having an exasperate piss attack because I DIDN'T FUCKING KNOW WHAT THE HELL FLUFF WAS and a 4 year old can't explain it.

235 Free Indie Games in 10 Minutes.

ant says...

Featured Games:
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US Navy shoots down Iranian passenger jet

jimnms says...

The following is from a Newsweek article read by Sen. Byrd (D, WV) during a congressional hearing on September 20, 2002:

The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam Hussein, he gave him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years ago, Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew recorded the historic moment.

The once and future Defense secretary, at the time a private citizen, had been sent by President Ronald Reagan to Baghdad as a special envoy. Saddam Hussein, armed with a pistol on his hip, seemed "vigorous and confident," according to a now declassified State Department cable obtained by Newsweek. Rumsfeld "conveyed the President's greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad," wrote the notetaker. Then the two men got down to business, talking about the need to improve relations between their two countries.

Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld was aware that Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had already bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the time, America's big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries who had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American diplomats for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East and its vital oilfields. On the--theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to support Iraq in a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting between Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the next five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United States backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence, economic aid and covert supplies of munitions...

The history of America's relations with Saddam is one of the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and again, America turned a blind eye to Saddam's predations, saw him as the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat him. No single policymaker or administration deserves blame for creating, or at least tolerating, a monster; many of their decisions seemed reasonable at the time. Even so, there are moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make one cringe. It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons...

The war against Iran was going badly by 1982. Iran's "human wave attacks" threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand.

After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of "dual use" equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for "video surveillance applications"; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of "bacteria/fungi/protozoa" to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacterial cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds.

The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprits were Saddam's own forces.

The United States was much more concerned with protecting Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped through the Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf. The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.

Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America favored him as a regional pillar; European and American corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote American farm and business interests. But Saddam's megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his hand. In 1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several Iraqi agents who were trying to buy electronic equipment used to make triggers for nuclear bombs. Not long after, Saddam gained the world's attention by threatening "to burn Israel to the ground." At the Pentagon, analysts began to warn that Saddam was a growing menace, especially after he tried to buy some American-made high-tech furnaces useful for making nuclear-bomb parts. Yet other officials in Congress and in the Bush administration continued to see him as a useful, if distasteful, regional strongman. The State Department was equivocating with Saddam right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait in August 1990.




From the beginning of Sen. Byrd's statement:
Mr. President, I referred to this Newsweek article yesterday at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Specifically, during the hearing, I asked Secretary Rumsfeld:

"Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we in fact now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sewn?"

The Secretary quickly and flatly denied any knowledge but said he would review Pentagon records.

I suggest that the administration speed up that review. My concerns and the concerns of others have grown.

A letter from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, which I shall submit for the Record, shows very clearly that the United States is, in fact, preparing to reap what it has sewn. A letter written in 1995 by former CDC Director David Satcher to former Senator Donald W. Riegle, Jr., points out that the U.S. Government provided nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in 1985--samples that included the plague, botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly diseases.

According to the letter from Dr. Satcher to former Senator Donald Riegle, many of the materials were hand carried by an Iraqi scientist to Iraq after he had spent 3 months training in the CDC laboratory.

The Armed Services Committee is requesting information from the Departments of Commerce, State, and Defense on the history of the United States, providing the building blocks for weapons of mass destruction to Iraq. I recommend that the Department of Health and Human Services also be included in that request.

The American people do not need obfuscation and denial. The American people need the truth. The American people need to know whether the United States is in large part responsible for the very Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which the administration now seeks to destroy.

We may very well have created the monster that we seek to eliminate. The Senate deserves to know the whole story. The American people deserve answers to the whole story.

The full transcript of the Congressional Record can be read here: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html

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