The Final Frontier

[cee-dee]

Space. There's  lot of it and that's only what we can see (so far).

These scientific types say they're seeing "so far back in time" (to the beginning of the universe?) that I wonder if some things have really been thought through?

We (OK, the scientific types) can see billions of Galaxies and trillions of stars and they're looking for Earth-like planets but ain't definitely found one yet. Yes, they've found some in the Goldilocks-zone near stars but they've also found some really strange Planets along with some Hellish places too.

Along with those, they've found some orphan Planets wandering through space which they conclude "must" have been flung out of their Solar system, possibly by a sling-shot from a large Planet in the same system but they don't have much to say about the fact that "an object, when propelled by a force will continue in the direction of that force until acted upon by another force." Simply put, if that orphan Planet was flung out, it must still be travelling the same speed as when it was flung out. Where's it going? Any heading our way?

There's other people maintaining a listening watch in case there's a radio signal coming from "somewhere out there". Well, if it's "come a long way", it'll have taken a long time to get here and the place from whence it came may no longer be there so there's no point in replying?

They're looking for life like us? Well, on the balance of probabilities given the number of stars we know about, there should be life "out there" but why should it be like us? We've found weird life on this planet in weird places so life "out there" could be "weird" (to us) too? Thing is, we'd appear to be weird to them too?

[023mjc]

God help us if they ever find life out there. We can't even live peacefully amongst ourselves, let alone with aliens.

[aernethril]

Amen

[joamur_gosof]

I have always wondered if we all stop spinning ,how far would we fall until we hit the bottom ?

So yes when is an orphan planet going to latch onto an orbit and how catstrophic would that be to the system it latches too ...or is it like pluto here in ours and it just racks em and stacks em...and is it dropping or stil flinging ? 

[joamur_gosof]

or after thought...floating ?

[cee-dee]

Many years ago there was a sci-fi movie on TV (I dunno if it was only a TV movie) about us Earth people making contact with some alien life in a spacecraft.

We (as in us humans) used our (new fangled) computers (as big as a side of a house!!) to work out how to translate their language to English and during the film it showed us and them at work making contact and both forms of life (us and them) working out whether we should meet or not.

Eventually the aliens decided they'd land on Earth and co-ordinates were exchanged for where the landing should be. Our (very early, primitive) radar showed the alien craft approaching but it couldn't be seen in vision by us. The craft was seen (by radar) to land in the middle of a (well mown) airfield but we couldn't see it.

Shots (supposedly) inside the alien craft showed the aliens looking out on a horrible gungy mess (like thick sludge) and a tangled mass of "strands" and crawling past was what looked like an enormous wriggling thing.

The aliens were saying we'd entrapped and deceived them and the lead scientist was asking where they were as he knew they'd landed but couldn't see them. Eventually he ran out over the airfield towards the general area where the aliens had landed and the last shot from inside the alien craft was a big flat thing descending on their craft as the scientists foot crushed the alien craft (and them too).

It was one of those "Guess the end yourself" films. It was obvious the aliens were absolutely minute in comparison to us which was why we couldn't see them and why the aliens thought the Earth was a gungy mess (wet soil) coupled with a tangled mass of "strands" (grass) and the Earthworm wriggling past their "window" was enormous.

Reason for the long-winded above was to illustrate that size is comparable to things on a Planet and that if there's "intelligent" life out there capable of Space travel, it could be much bigger (or more probably) much smaller than us.

[mustard-tree]

I think that was based on an Arthur C Clarke short story

I havent seen the movie, but I have read the story

[malacandran]

It's Katherine MacLean's 1951 SF short story "Pictures Don't Lie".

One of the most memorable SF tales ever written.  Especially the concluding lines:

"Where are they, then?  Why can't we see their space ship?"

-  "We'll need a magnifying glass for that"

[fallen-archie]

I saw a piece on the news about our most distant planet Pluto, all being well we will soon have images of its surface for the first time. It is by all accounts a very cold place so does anyone have a clue what we are likely to see?

[electric*mayhem*band]

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@fallen-archie wrote:
I saw a piece on the news about our most distant planet Pluto, all being well we will soon have images of its surface for the first time.

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Who on earth (no pun intended) wants to look at the bleak and featureless landscapes of planets ? Completely void of vegetation or wild life, and simply composed of dust and rocks.  I'd rather look at images of the Yorkshire Dales' rolling hills, or of the aesthetically pleasing countryside of the Garden of England

However, like the planets, I have no burning desire to go there.

Spoiler

Apologies to the inhabitants of Yorkshire & Kent.

[fallen-archie]

Yes the Rolling hills of Rochester, a sight to behold and the Yorkshire Dales very beautiful were it not for the locals 🙂 The final frontier is Jims last challenge, Who knows when the first Klingon will appear.

[cee-dee]

It's a bit difficult to criticise some of these Space projects without getting a slap-back because on the one hand they cost such a lot of money and seem to provide enjoyment for the people involved with the project. Witness the Beagle2 probe which touched down on Mars 10 years ago but failed to deploy it's Solar panels properly. It was "one of the cheapest interplanetary missions yet". Cheap? It cost £50 million.

On the other hand things such as Space exploration give rise to the invention of "new things".........

One "new thing" they've not devised (yet) is a fast means of travel. It's taken New Horizons (the Pluto probe) 9 years to get to where it's at and that's not even clear of our own Solar system! 30,000 miles per hour is just too slow for Space travel and that's at a total cost for the mission approaching £500 million!

Voyager has taken 36 years to leave our Solar system and while all these things are "interesting" and provide lots of "new information", apart from the technological spin-offs, do they really help most of us here on Earth?

At one time, new discoveries were made by clever people experimenting and working things out at their own expense and interest or new discoveries were made almost "by accident" while working on something else. Allowing the "mad scientists" free reign with taxpayers money is no doubt a wonderful job of work and "most interesting" for them but has it all got out of hand?

In spite of all the ridiculous claims of those who believe alien spacecraft are regularly "flying" around our Planet, no-one has produced any photos of one so perhaps those employed on the Pluto mission could provide a few?

[023mjc]

 I can't remember the details, but the've managed to land a probe on a comet, millions of miles away, travelling at God knows how many miles an hour - but they still can't get the "bagging area" to work properly.

[suzieseaside]

I find it weird that we seem to know more about space than some of the deepest parts of the ocean on earth, although that research is also expensive, but I suppose there will always be funding to study the universe because it's there, regardless of whether there might be beneficial spin-offs.

There are photos of UFOs of course, which only means unidentified and not necesarily alien, but who would know if they were fake.

Then there's the Project Blue Book collection - invetigations of UFOs by the US miltary.  But eeek -129,000+ pages - life is too short to even work out where to start!

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/20/us/feat-air-force-ufo-project-blue-book/

http://projectbluebook.theblackvault.com/

[cee-dee]

You mean the landing of Philae on Agilkia which is travelling at around 25,000 miles per hour.

It hit too hard, bounced and the lander is possibly on it's side in shadow so it's batteries can't re-charge.

All that cost £1,050,000,000

[fallen-archie]

Would you not agree that the landing was a tad unlucky. What they sought to achieve was impressive and they failed (sort of) by a small margin. Cost wise it depends how you measure it.

[cee-dee]

Well they didn't get the speed of "landing" right so it wasn't bad luck because the thruster didn't work so they decided to land anyway.What was bad luck was where the probe ended up when it made contact after the second bounce.

I guess they measured the cost as "worth it" because they all had a jolly good time and they weren't paying for it.

[bankhaunter]

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@cee-dee wrote:

Well they didn't get the speed of "landing" right so it wasn't bad luck because the thruster didn't work so they decided to land anyway.What was bad luck was where the probe ended up when it made contact after the second bounce.

I guess they measured the cost as "worth it" because they all had a jolly good time and they weren't paying for it.

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And it does show it would be possible, where there is an asteroid on a path that meant collison with the Earth was likely in the future, an ion drive could be planted on it to change that path.

[bankhaunter]

You might find this interesting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050bs79

[mustard-tree]

Surely it is not beyond the realms of possibility that an alien craft would have the technology to scan and observe unseen.

Being honest, if you were an alien scanning and observing earth from high orbit, would you want to land and make contact.