Yep grew up on UFO good show for it's time, or so met Ed Bishop back in the 1990's :up:

No, but like I said, we already have a good working model. We know it's fairly good because it can be used to accurately predict things that happen in the universe. It's not like we're just at the beginning of our knowledge of how the universe works. The thing is, you're assuming that the path of knowledge is a linear path. It isn't. There's a law of diminishing returns. You learn a lot at first, and then less and less as you go on. It's not like there's that much stuff left to play with. It's not like some new fuel will suddenly emerge, because we've seen a lot of what's out there, and we've seen how physics works in the universe and things just aren't doing what we need them to do in order to find that elusive power source that's going to get us to other stars in a short time scale.

"Fuel" is't important the real need is power. NASA's VASIMER requires only 100 kg of fuel to send a 10,000 kg space probe to Mars via a HTO compaired to 190,000 kg for a rocket, an Ion Thruster (A mission proven techonlgly) requires only 620 kg of fuel. VASIMER and Nuclear Electric Rockets are what you are going to be seeing in the decades to come. :yep:

40 Years to get to Alpha Centuri isn't something to shake a stick at! If they found a planet there I'd go to give my kids a chance at a life there!

That's fine, but speed is truly the real thing, and nothing can get us anywhere near the speed of light. 10% of lightspeed isn't even within our grasp yet, and may never be possible.

But 40 years definitely IS something to shake a stick at. If it was only the time spent in space it wouldn't be much of a problem. But you have problems of consumables storage and radiation to take into account. 40 years of solar radiation is not something to scoff at. The entire crew of an interstellar craft might be dead of radiation sickness within a decade.

But that is exactly what I mean, it'S like you say yourself: we have OUR working model. It matches our paradigms. For some old tribe, the world model of a schamanistic priest worked indeed - he even was able to be of help. He was able to influence the physical wellbeing of ill people. How - is something different. Interaction between his deeds, and his patient's mind, a thing of belief, placebo - whatever.

Our working model is science. For others it is some fundamentalistic interpretation of religion. what is science? It is much debated. Seing it from one of the perspectves that I personally prefer, radical constructivism, it means to take obervations and put them into an artificial order. If the ordering scheme changes, due to our way of looking at the world, so does the conclusions and relations we see between the obervations we make. It even can be that two paradigms work at the same time, but only on different levels. Newton physics do work - you can see that in every billiard match. Quantum phyasics work as well, but on a different level only. The one cannot be used to explain the observations on the level that the other paradigm fits well to describe.

Politics and economics also influence the way we see the world. Scienctific institutions more and more are object of getting sold to economical lobbies, means: business corporations. This changes their focus, their way to approach their field of research. the question "Why?" looses in importance, the question "How?" wins in importance. Understanding is replaced by how to help the paying industrial owner of that institute to reach his profit interests, and to supply him with the tools for a problem in the field of his business. You easily loose track of links and systems that way, and tend to focus on isolated details exclusively.

what I mean is simply this: science does not give us an objective, a final, an ultimate view of things, world, universe. Far the opposite: it is a highly subjective affair. Of course, a majority of scientist does not like to be told that. They see themselves as the priest of this new religion called "objectivity". the results of their work is not the final word. Becasue there is no such thing like objectivity. The observer determoines the outcome of the observation - by the simple fact of determening the situational variables, and by that: influencing the outcome. It is just our thinking patterns, our subjective and artifical way to bring our experinces into any kind of order. And we can create different sets of ordering structure by using the same categories - and then the same set of raw data suddenly has a completely different meaning and leads to different results.

The world is inside our heads. Star Trek needs to be accompanied by Mind Trek. But scientific exploration that is depending on getting financed by business and companies tends to ignore that.

Glasersfeld is such an exciting read!

No. It is independently verifiable. It's not subject to bias. The scientific method is based on observation and proved through CRITICAL review. While scientific theories may be dreamed up subjectively, the scientific method supplies the required objectivity. For example, the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun is not something that's subjective based on our point of view or biases. Although the theory may have been arrived at subjectively, the proof of it is objective. I agree that politics and commerce have their influence, as many scientists can affirm throughout the years, but the Earth still revolves around the Sun no matter how much the Catholic church (and other non-scientific influences) have disliked the fact in the past.

Non-scientific influences usually only govern WHAT gets studied. They no longer have influence on the results of the studies. Sure, that means that some things that should perhaps be studied don't get funding, but it's entirely wrong to suggest that these influences negate the entire progress.

As for religion, it applies no set of rules by which theories can be tested. No religious tenet was ever subjected to the kind of critical review that scientific theories are constantly subject to. To suggest that science is little more than a new religion, comparable to fundamentalist religion, is nonsense.

Independently...? But you are already depending on a system, an understanding of your human existence, in which the words "earth", "sun" and "revolving" have a predefined, subjective understanding. ;) If we would have been a highly technological civilization, but would live undersea, in an isolated cave without a sky above, the term "sun" and "planet revolving around it" wouldn't make sense. We even would not imagine it. Our living conditions, and our senses already massively influence the way we approach the universe. We focus on certain things, and completely miss others. If you still think i am off course, bind your eyes for one day so that you are simulating to be blind, and then go through that day for just 12 hours.

Or think in a sub-nuclear scale: the objects you speak of, for the most consist of nothing else but empty space, and like a handfull of dust particles inside an olymipc arena the incredibly small particles that are humming around in it even cannot and should not be imagined as hard, solid matter. We even cannot imagine what they really are, and if they are. They are abstract s for us only. We speak of probability clouds, of tendencies to exist and not to exist. So, depending if you look at it from a Newtonian perspective, or a subnuclear perspective, or even a spiritual one: we even cannot reach consensus on wether it is really two huge and massive and solid tennis balls, one revoling around each other, or if it is only empty space interacting with empty space - which we even cannot imagine. Liike billiard players we stick to the Newtonian pespective, becasue that way the oprder we have put our observation into allows us to do certain things. If things really are like they seem to us is something completely different. We do not deal with a last and final reality, but only our imagination of it.

The chinese term to name what we in the West call physics, is Wu-Li. This usually is translated as somehting like "dynamic patterns/structures of organic energy". Where in the West we associate hard physics with hard matter, in the widest sense. Our engineering comes at our minds immediately, somehow, again: "hard" constructing. Even this already is another approach already, caused by a different (cultural) approach on life and meaning, and leading to shifted focusses of attention.

We depend on our senses and their perceptions. But these perceptions are no proove at all for anything what we believe we "see". They only proove the action of our brain, and that they work like intended by their biological design.

I never was able to grab a Newton law, turn it in my hand, and look at it from different angles. It is a thinking pattern of mine only, not more. I stick to it, because it serves my purposes. If I would be a drifting jellyfish, having intelligence nevertheless, it probably wouldn't have any meaning for me, for I can't use tools, and do not push around things.

And here we cross the line to a neighbouring discipline of research: mind, and intelligence.

But it is late... :lol:

I close with a quote by the astro-physician Prof. Timothy Ferris (I translate back into English from my German script): "So we do not have the universe in front of us "(as object of our reasearch, he means)", which will always remain an eternal riddle, but a model of the universe that we can let appear inside our heads (to our liking). For all of us not the cosmos out there is the final object of reasearch, but it's dance with our mind." And Prof John Wheeler wrote in one of his books (my translation): "A phenomenon only then is a phenomenon, when it is an observed phenomenon." Old wisdom, but still very actual...

Really got to disagree with you Beery...I think it's the height of hubris to think we can know almost everything there is to know. Science may be self-critical and an excellent system for understanding nature but it is made by humans after all.

Skybird's last quote says it for me too.

Okay. But to say so is to underestimate the efficacy of the scientific method. Anyway my main point is that it's wrong to say that because we DON'T know absolutely everything, what we have learned is useless. That is, in effect what Skybird is saying. It's a recipe for faith-based science, and that's what led to the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials.

NO. Where have I said that? You twist my arguments here. I indicated exactly the opposite. I just said that science is a model in itself, too. I am a big propagator of logic, reason and sytematical and empirical research myself. But I do know that subject and object always, always interact and mutually influence each other. And this also has been written by far brighter minds than I am, too, since the 20th century (and even before!) I know that from psycvhology, from physics, from "physics-philosophy" (or however you want to call it, I direct to names like Heisenberg, Bohr, Einstein, and so many more). The way you look at something, no matter what, already defines (and limits) the range of probable outcomes. You cannot escape that as long as subject and object are two separates.

The last sentence on faith and witchcraft is bloody nonsens, completely, Nothing like that I said, nowhere. Don't connect me to those foolish words.

I do belive that sience is one of the Powers behinde our developement, BUT sience as it is today is thinking only in ways which are comfortable.

What's the main problem in sience ?? as further you go as more it costs, so you'll make your research in fields you KNOW you can profit later on. with this we have lost the liberty to search in fields where maybe only an Idea does exist.

Sure the Star Fleet has Antimatter Drives, who knows maybee some day we have them to as we are able to make Antymatter, avev if the amount is minimal but we can make it.

How long are we working on the Fusionreactor ?? We know it's possible (look at the Sun) but we don't have jet the capability to use it.
Our sience goes in direction where in a distance a profit is seen because the effort to discover something new is so Expensive that only the Industry and Govs. want to spend money and ofcoarse they do expect a ROI.

Look at the medicine, we have tons of pills and drugs against Cancer, Flu and even HIV, but almost NON for some little known but also Deadly illnesses or DNA defects. Why ??? Because you can't make Money with only a few Sik ppl.

I understand your point and agree with much of it, and I'm certainly no fan of how the pharmaceutical industry does business (especially in the US), but there are valid reasons (other than profit) why it's better to focus on illnesses that affect the many rather than the few. It might not be fair, but I think it's more fair than the alternative, which is to focus on the diseases of the few rather than the many.

Aliens are advanced and yada, yada, yada...

why the hell they don't wear clothes? :88)

Seriously, if aliens are going to recruit humans then I will apply for the immigration in no time. fck humans :-j

So this means somethhing unidentified is not real ?? How they know if they did not identify it ??

Wow, talking about a wild guess :D

Its a case for the British X-Files. Kap and Oberon are on the case if they ever get out of the pub. :lol: