Response to the common skeptic's argument that interstellar travel is inherently unfeasible.

there is another barrier that is not discussed here... so called cosmic rays which permeate space. these are near light speed particles that have the energy of a hard hit tennis ball. 12 feet of concrete would be equivalent to the earths atmosphere and would have to protect anything more complex than a rock for hundreds of years from cosmic ray impact. DNA, computer memory, anything more complex than a rock or photon is going to be eventually disabled.
SO anything flying through space for hundreds of years will have to be self repairing and defended by the equivalent of 12 feet of concrete.

Interstellar travel is possible, if you can harness the vast amounts of zero-point energy. We know that the fabric of space has a shape. That shape is a cube. The key is the force of a vaccume. The vaccume energy not only creates suction, but it also curves the shape of space. Particles that exist in a "ghost" state would behave differently in a vaccume. If there was a craft with a electro-conductive skin ie. catalyst (spark), unlimited amounts of free energy could be rung from the very fabric of space.

reply to post by WingedBull


QUIT PROTECTING the whole scientific community. There ARE completely close-minded asses that yes, think things revlolve around discovered science. Just because you put a badge or get A+ in some PhD or whatever doesn't make you godly knowledgable and credible, I've seen scientists going unscientific and biased,

Yes, there are those who think it is impossible for aliens to reach us here,,, WHY? How do you know how they travel, just because movies haven't presented a theory of such travel yet? Or Because we have no idea that some completely unthought way of travel can exist...?

This is where traditional/main-stream science is wrong (it's called so for a reason, it is based on what it accepts and what not) - just because something seems impossible it has to be - and I also think there are things that are impossible but saying - NO WAY aliens could travel such distances is unscientific and absolutely wrong since you don't know what methods they could use.

So this is just shooting an opinion or bias.,.

See, the OP is right - there is some common bias about space travel here.

reply to post by WingedBull



Mhmm.. That's pretty much the kid of response I expected from you.

Have a great day.

If interstellar travel is impossible ...

... how come they're HERE ???§!!

Originally posted by Chrysalis
If interstellar travel is impossible ...

... how come they're HERE ???§!!

Interstellar travel is impossible for us because we are a primitive type 0 civilization with a limited knowledge of physics, who know what is possible for a type 1,2 or 3 civilization with an a advanced knowledge of physics and the ability to harnesses the energy output of a Star or even Galaxy .

Of course there are ways to imagine travel between the stars if you want to adjust the variables of species lifespan or imagine some fancy high-tech gee whiz way of circumventing the known laws of physics.

But that don't make it true.

Originally posted by gortex
Interstellar travel is impossible for us because we are a primitive type 0 civilization with a limited knowledge of physics, who know what is possible for a type 1,2 or 3 civilization with an a advanced knowledge of physics and the ability to harnesses the energy output of a Star or even Galaxy.

In other words, it's relatively easy for imaginary aliens to travel between the stars with their fancy space ships powered by pixie dust.

Originally posted by Imtor
QUIT PROTECTING the whole scientific community. There ARE completely close-minded asses that yes, think things revlolve around discovered science.

Who? Should be easily to point them out, right?

Originally posted by Imtor
Just because you put a badge or get A+ in some PhD or whatever doesn't make you godly knowledgable and credible

Again, who makes such a claim. Name them.

Originally posted by Imtor
Yes, there are those who think it is impossible for aliens to reach us here...

Who?

There is a difference between saying something is impossible and saying something is improbable or unfeasible.

Originally posted by Imtor
WHY? How do you know how they travel, just because movies haven't presented a theory of such travel yet?

Do you really think scientists base theories on what is in movies?

Originally posted by Imtor
This is where traditional/main-stream science is wrong (it's called so for a reason, it is based on what it accepts and what not)

Yeah, that whole pesky evidence thing defining what you accept and don't accept...

Originally posted by ImtorNO WAY aliens could travel such distances is unscientific and absolutely wrong since you don't know what methods they could use.

Again, who says it is impossible?

It's only absolutely wrong if it is shown to be wrong. Thus far, no one has shown it to be wrong. It is wrong, however, to say that aliens have some method beyond our understanding of physics, when you have no evidence to show this.

Originally posted by Imtor
See, the OP is right - there is some common bias about space travel here.

Who here is against space-travel?

This thread seems to be less about what certain straw man skeptics say and more about what UFO believers think scientists say.

reply to post by Blue Shift

In other words, it's relatively easy for imaginary aliens to travel between the stars with their fancy space ships powered by pixie dust.

In other words just because something is impossible for us doesn't mean it is for some of the many other civilizations out there in our Galaxy .
I doubt they use pixie dust though

Originally posted by Chrysalis
If interstellar travel is impossible ...

... how come they're HERE ???§!!

You're assuming they're from another planet.

reply to post by WingedBull


'UFO believers'... some will never learn the difference between thinking logically and being objective and being a 'BELIEVER' ...

Who? I can't give specific names, I've seen in documentaries, in other interviews, a lot here on ATS, this 'Aliens cannot travel so far' is a wrong assumption since no one can tell how they travel, and basing the non-visitation claim on 'If intelligent aliens were out there, they couldn't reach us' is totally out of place.

SO there are such who make such claims and I am against those.

As for taken out from movies here is the scheme:

Conspiracy theories, theories and clasified data ----> Movies (they take the ideas from such stories)--->Science tries to create things seen in movies or again some theories

Lot's of today's ideas and technology comes from trying to do something that was only existing in sci-fi that's why often they have motto such as 'No longer science fiction' etc

reply to post by Imtor


I think you've got the whole movie & science thing skewed and mixed up.

The thing with movies and science is; movies, books, and such come from fantasy where in creating a story, for a story to be believable, stories need find solutions/explanations for problems.

Often these solutions to problems have no real basis or only partial basis in science, though, sometimes they only bend known science to keep a sense of realism.
Take Dune for instance. The Spice Melange gives the Spacing Guild navigators the ability to travel vast distances of space using 'folded' space.

Folded or warped space is theorized in science. Sometimes these things are just arbitrarily made up by writers. Sometimes the ideas are taken from science. Sometimes the idea though arbitrarity made up be a writer is intriguing enough such that someone in science might look at it and say "hmmm. how could we make that happen in the real world?".

It works both ways. Science isn't just in the business of making fairy tales come true, nor are Writers and Movie makers in the business of simply stealing from science or embroidering.

Original work and ideas can come from any corner.

Consider also, a number of Science Fiction writers ARE SCIENTISTS and were scientists first, before they ever wrote a science fiction story. They use this platform of Science Fiction to entertain ideas, and solutions that may not be taken seriously, or don't have enough data to be taken so on an academic platform, or merely as an informed and educated 'what if'.

Ideas come from all over. Ideas come from wanting to be able to DO something, or achieve an effect whereby an imaginary solution may be called on to achieve such in a work of fiction, or, a real solution worked toward and solved in real life.

Originally posted by Druscilla
The problem I have relates not to the life span of any potential visitor, but the sheer vast enormous magnitude of the universe and the time scales involved.

For instance, if you could count one star each second in the Milky Way, it would take you over 10,000 years to count all the stars in just our galaxy.
Spread that out over Hundreds of BILLIONS of Galaxies, and it would take several orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe itself to explore even a small portion of the total universe, even if you could visit/count one star a second.

This is not a problem to a hypothetically advanced civilization that has likely mastered the science of nanotechnology. This site explains how, at least in principle, an advanced civilization can completely explore the Milky Way galaxy in 500,000 years.

A Von Neumann probe is a robot designed to reach distant star systems and create factories which will reproduce copies themselves by the thousands. A dead moon rather than a planet makes the ideal destination for Von Neumann probes, since they can easily land and take off from these moons, and also because these moons have no erosion. These probes would live off the land, using naturally occurring deposits of iron, nickel, etc. to create the raw ingredients to build a robot factory. They would create thousands of copies of themselves, which would then scatter and search for other star systems.

Similar to a virus colonizing a body many times its size, eventually there would be a sphere of trillions of Von Neumann probes expanding in all directions, increasing at a fraction of the speed of light. In this fashion, even a galaxy 100,000 light years across may be completely analyzed within, say, a half million years.

If a Von Neumann probe only finds evidence of primitive life (such as an unstable, savage Type 0 civilization) they might simply lie dormant on the moon, silently waiting for the Type 0 civilization to evolve into a stable Type I civilization. After waiting quietly for several millennia, they may be activated when the emerging Type I civilization is advanced enough to set up a lunar colony. Physicist Paul Davies of the University of Adelaide has even raised the possibility of a Von Neumann probe resting on our own moon, left over from a previous visitation in our system aeons ago.

So, assuming some UFO's originated in some other part of the galaxy, it is not unreasonable to assume they are self-replicating probes that have been lying dormant of either a highly advanced civilization or one that has long been extinct. This conclusion violates no known law of physics nor does it invoke theoretical constructs that are used to explain away hypothetical interstellar travel, as even a civilization that isn't capable of accomplishing interstellar travel can still use this technology to explore the galaxy.

Originally posted by Diablos

So, assuming ... it is not unreasonable to assume ...

I think therein lies the problem.
Assuming on assumptions isn't exactly sound logic.

I am, however, well aware of Von Neumann machines. there are many types and sorts proposed, dreamed up, discussed and illustrated in literature and media from gigantic kilometers long god-like benevolent machine intelligence spaceships of Iain Banks's Culture series, to the Replicators of the Stargate Series.

There's all sorts and types.

Originally posted by Druscilla
I think therein lies the problem.
Assuming on assumptions isn't exactly sound logic.

That's because there isn't any definitive evidence that UFO's are of extraterrestrial origin. But, if an advanced civilization wanted to explore the galaxy in the most economically feasible manner, probes are clearly the way to go rather than manual exploration. Seeing as an advanced civilization will have understood the science behind molecular manufacturing, they will have sent out self-replicating probes throughout the universe at some point in time, much like we will in the near future once we have a better understanding of nanotechnology.

Originally posted by thedoctorswife

Originally posted by OpenEars123
Good point!

What gets me is that people will say it is impossible going by 'our' laws of physics. What makes our physics so perfect and final? We are an under evolved race, therefore our laws of physics are under evolved. Just my 2 pence.

Same here, i tend to think, why are our laws of physics considered definitive?

They aren't quite definitive, but it's because what we know today can explain an enormous variety of phenomenon that we observe on Earth and also explain some pretty spectacular astrophysical phenomena far outside the usual states of matter on Earth as well.

We know fundamental particle interactions and we know the finite # of elements and the apparently finite # of stable particles. We have found no important fundamental interactions with stable particles since discovering the neutron and nuclear fission in the 1930's. The only big thing of fundamental physics still outstanding is Dark Matter & Dark Energy, but there is no evidence it plays any role on anything smaller than massive intergalactic distances.

There would have to be some big-deal Thing out there which we have seen no evidence for so far, and yet have it be reasonably engineerable. New interactions which take place only in neutron stars or Big Bang---maybe, but something that can be made in a factory? Nothing so far. I wish it weren't so, but that's what it looks like. In practice, we'd need to be able to make "dark matter" beams regularly, and that means a strong coupling to known phenomena, but then we would have observed dark matter directly in the lab by 1910 or so, and not only very very indirectly via very distant astrophysical observations.

Our understanding of physics which we have gained since about 1850 is fundamentally different from the knowledge that humans have had since the dawn of civilization. We've gone from not really understanding anything to understanding most everything of reasonable significance (at a fundamental level) necessary to understand all planetary accessible phenomena.

Our understanding of biology, however, is more like our understanding of physics in 1880 (we knew a lot of physics then, but there was still 50%-60% more to discover) Just witness the recent discoveries published last week that the supposed "Junk DNA", is not random viral leftovers but part of a very complex and critical regulatory system. A central part of biological regulation at the molecular level was just recognized last week---this is easily Nobel Prize level work and as profound as discovering neutrons or something.

The point is that we know where we are in biology, everywhere we look, we find more anomalies and more complexities. We saw that in physics in 1880 too, once technology for instruments got good enough and we started to have some control over electronics, we started finding lots of new things with high voltages and vacuum and optics and spectrographs. Fundamental discoveries came in every 5 years.

We aren't getting that in physics any more. It's learning more about rearrangements of atoms and molecules and light which do interesting things but nothing new practical about the fundamental laws themselves applicable to Earth.

Originally posted by Diablos

Originally posted by Druscilla
I think therein lies the problem.
Assuming on assumptions isn't exactly sound logic.

That's because there isn't any definitive evidence that UFO's are of extraterrestrial origin. But, if an advanced civilization wanted to explore the galaxy in the most economically feasible manner, probes are clearly the way to go rather than manual exploration. Seeing as an advanced civilization will have understood the science behind molecular manufacturing, they will have sent out self-replicating probes throughout the universe at some point in time, much like we will in the near future once we have a better understanding of nanotechnology.

Perhaps the beings supposedly on these probes are similarly "manufactured". Biology is already the self-sufficient self-replicating nanotechnology machine.

reply to post by Diablos


Suppose there is more than one advanced civilization in the galaxy.

Self-replicating probes might be considered to be "pollution" or even aggressive military assets, and hence undesirable. (If they can mine minerals to make themselves, they can mine uranium, or attach themselves in large numbers to asteroids and destroy habitable planets on command or whenever they feel like it). Maybe they're kept in check by eradication bots.

It's possible and it's in the grasp of our scientists full understanding, yet we have a long way to go as to uncover the full depths of it.